What a great day today in Hinche, Haiti, working with our two Health eVillages Regis College Outreach Program (HERO) coordinators, Kettie and Manoucheka. It was incredible to see the level of much needed nursing education that Manoucheka is providing at St. Terese’s Hospital and also how crucial it is to have Kettie supporting her in the U.S. The day began with group training where Manoucheka gathered 30 nurses from the hospital to learn about the proper way for a woman to breastfeed. This is a crucial skill in a country where it is often not safe or too expensive to provide formula for your child. Manoucheka and Kettie projected a video on breastfeeding directly from the Health eVillages iPad, stopping it periodically to quiz the nurses on what they had just learned.
We then toured the hospital, spending time in various wards, constantly surrounded by the nurses that Manoucheka educates, a true sign of how important she is to the hospital. We were able to witness first hand a nurse in their wound care ward, working with a patient who had been struck by a bike and had an open wound on her leg. Just last week our coordinators ran an intensive training on wound care, where they were able to bring the entire hospital up to speed on updated protocols and procedures. It was incredible for them to find out that some of the techniques being employed prior to their training had been replaced 10 years ago!
Health eVillages looks forward to continuing our support of these two incredible women, working hand in hand with our Haitian healthcare partners, Regis College and Partners In Health. Our Health eVillages Project Coordinator, Dom Portalla, captured some incredible footage today and will continue to do so throughout this trip. If you haven’t seen the “Moving the Needle” video he produced on our East African sites last October, be sure to check it out at www.healthevillages.org/resources/videos!