American Vein & Vascular Institute recently donated more than 50 sets of scrubs to Health4Haiti, a non-profit that improves lives and healthcare outcomes for the citizens of Gonaives, Haiti.
Gonaives is currently served by one public hospital, according to Health4Haiti’s website (healthfourhaiti.com), and that hospital has been destroyed twice due to hurricane flooding in 2004 and 2008. There remains a great need for additional support to improve the area’s medical care infrastructure.
Health4Haiti is a 501(c)(3) medical humanitarian organization dedicated to improving the lives and health care of people in Gonaives, a city of more than 350,00 people in Haiti. The Health4Haiti Partnership began as a series of mission trips made by parishioners of Pueblo, Colorado’s Ascension Episcopal Church in 1999.
After Hurricane Jeanne flooded the city in 2004, the original group asked St. Mary-Corwin Health Foundation in Pueblo for its help to re-equip the hospital and to re-open its operating rooms.
The result was a three-year grant from Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) in support of this mission, sending a medical team each year to re-open and maintain the operating rooms, to treat patients, and to build a new clinic at the Episcopal Church and School. Five other foundations have provided grant support as well.
Since receiving the grant, Health4Haiti has re-equipped the hospital twice with desperately needed equipment such as anesthesia machines, X-ray machines, surgical instruments, neonatal incubators, oxygen concentrators and beds.
“Health4Haiti is grateful for your generosity and support,” Jim Smith, MD and president of Health4Haiti, said. “The employees of the clinic in Gonaives, Haiti will be happy to have new scrubs to wear at work. The clinic has been providing much-needed healthcare to the citizens of Gonaives since 2010.”
American Vein & Vascular Institute is an award-winning network of vein and arterial diagnosis and treatment centers in Colorado and Texas. For further information, see americanvein.com. VTN