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Follow us on TwitterHaiti Earthquake Recon: Another Day, Another Change of Plans
Posted by Walt Vernon on April 12, 2010 at 10:20pm
From left: our driver, Pierre; John Pappas; Eric MacFarlane; Terry Dover; Mike Olson
Another plan change. Today, thanks to my friends at Health Care Without Harm, I was able to get in touch with people at UNICEF. We were interested in talking with the people who are making decisions about the development of new healthcare facilities within Haiti. After touring four Haitian Hospitals, we have a very good sense of the kinds of things that make these buildings successful to operate, and we wanted to see if we could extend our help beyond the Project HOPE assessments we did.
Over the course of the day, we were able to meet with UNICEF, the U.S. Embassy, the World Health Organization, and the Deputy Director of the Haitian Ministry of Health. Tomorrow, the Haitian representative of Project HOPE will go with us, and we will meet with some engineers at the Ministry of Health. We will then meet with the head of UNICEF here and, possibly, with USAID (they have been difficult to get to).
Three of our team—Terry Dover (a U.S. Army medical equipment planner), Eric MacFarlane (a structural engineer with Dekker/Perich/Sabatini), and John Pappas—head back to the states tomorrow. Mike Olson (a medical planner with The Innova Group) and I will remain here for these final meetings - for this time. I am very sorry to see these three guys go. I think we have made a very strong team, and we have done some very good work that, I think, will do some good for somebody somehow. I am very proud to be able to have been a part of this, and I am very proud of what this team has done. It is now 9:30 at night, and Mike and Pappas are still sitting across the table from me working on finishing the reports. This has been a great and very supportive group of people. I am so impressed with these four guys. I am so grateful to Project HOPE for recruiting us and for all the work they did to make our time here effective. It was a real challenge, and our “boss” was amazing at getting things to work. I am amazed at all the good things their volunteers are doing here, and I am amazed at all the good work that all of the volunteers are doing here.
Mike and I will spend tomorrow night in the Project HOPE compound. I will provide you with final thoughts on Hôpital Notre Dame and Adventist Hospital, as well as any other insight I can from the various ministries who are trying to make a dent in the overwhelming need here.
John, Terry, Eric - Godspeed, and thank you for letting me be part of our little team.
Comments
Walt,
Arash told Paul and I you were there when we saw him in SF last week and we weren’t at all surprised that you’d drop everything and go. If something comes up where there is some pro bono work to do I’d be very happy to push hard on Stantec to share the burden with you. Yours is the first blog I’ve ever read by the way - writings not bad!
Ray
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