Its mission includes bringing the benefits of modern medical science to those most in need, serving as a model for delivering care to the poor and underserved and inspiring others to do the same. Originally dedicated to serving the residents of rural Haiti, today PIH also works in Africa (Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi, Liberia, and Sierra Leone), Peru, Mexico, Russia and the Navajo Nation. PIH reaches into some of the world’s poorest and sickest communities to provide health care equipment, expertise and services that can improve and save lives. You can learn more about Farmer and the organization he created in Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography Mountains Beyond Mountain: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World.
Consider Haiti’s destitute Central
Plateau, where Farmer founded PIH 30 years ago. Here, just two orthopedic surgeons serve 500,000 people. Across the nation, other surgical specialties are equally lacking. Tragically, this dearth of care allows easily treatable conditions to become dangerous or worse. For example, surgical services could prevent up to 90 percent of maternal deaths, according to an April 2015 article in The Lancet. In Haiti and around the world, PIH
strives to fill this tragic absence of surgeries, training the next generation of surgeons and teaching physicians from around the world to provide care in resource-poor settings. University Hospital staff in Mirebalais, Haiti, have recently begun working along- side international teams to per- form especially complex surgeries, such as pediatric cardiac surgery and neurosurgery.
Case Studies For Roseline Bernard, then 17, access to surgery at University Hospital made all the difference.
PIH’s team of doctors and nurses collaborate with visiting clinicians to perform pediatric heart surgery at University Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti, on Sept. 8, 2015. (Photo by Rebecca E. Rollins / Partners In Health)
Two years ago, Bernard lived with
her grandmother and her aunt in Las- cahobas, a small community in Hai- ti’s Central Plateau. Her mother died when she was young and her father has not been around, so her work har- vesting avocadoes is a big contribu- tion to the household.
That summer, Bernard climbed
high into her family’s avocado tree to collect the fruit before it ripened and dropped to the ground. She was nearly three stories high when she fell. Just a year earlier, PIH could have treated her, but her odds of recover- ing from such a fall would have been
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