St. Boniface Hospital — the Miracle Workers

The road to St. Boniface Hospital in Fond des Blancs, Haiti, was never easy. But after the heavy rains and hurricanes of last year, the roads have become nearly impassable. This remote area lies in the back-country mountains of the southern peninsula, just 60 miles from Port-au-Prince. Yet a recent trip took over six hours, says Nannette Canniff, the head of the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation and president of St. Boniface Hospital. "The last 10 miles took over and hour and a half."

In Haiti, often cited as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, 80 percent of people live in abject poverty and most do not have access to quality medical care. St. Boniface Hospital serves a community of over 45,000 rural poor. Opened in 1990, this 28-bed facility also has 24-hour emergency care, an operating room, an on-site laboratory and well-stocked pharmacy. On average, 2,600 patients are seen each month on an outpatient basis.

CRS has worked with St. Boniface Hospital for many years, providing food for their nutrition programs that treat severely malnourished children. The children, who are hospitalized for up to 15 days, are given vitamins and nutritious foods. After their release from the hospital, the children return every two weeks to be weighed and receive food that will last until the next visit. These nutrition programs also benefit pregnant women and nursing mothers.

Last year, CRS' AIDSRelief program began supporting St. Boniface to provide lifesaving antiretroviral medicines to people infected with the HIV virus. AIDSRelief is a five-member consortium led by CRS to provide free care and treatment to persons living with HIV and AIDS in Haiti and eight other countries hardest hit by the pandemic. As of March 2006, the program at St. Boniface had enrolled 50 people into antiretroviral therapy and 186 people into HIV care and treatment. The transformation in their lives is miraculous.

Improving the Health of the Community

The hospital employs as many people from the community as they can, paying them a living wage in an area where most people, if they can find work at all, earn less than a dollar a day. This has in turn helped support the twice-weekly outdoor market, which has more than doubled in size and attests to the positive effect the hospital has had on the community.

The St. Boniface Haiti Foundation works tirelessly to raise funds for the hospital and to arrange for the surgical teams' and volunteers' visits. In a recent letter, Nannette Canniff, thanked CRS for its support.

"CRS has supplied food to our hospital for as long as I can remember," Nannette writes. "Many times when our stores were just about empty, the truck would arrive in the nick of time. I have seen the doctors come out to help unload the truck, so happy because they knew we would have food to feed the poor once again. You are in the business of feeding the world, so to speak, so I need not go on about how much that means to those who go hungry without your generosity."

The work of St. Boniface Hospital on behalf of such a remote, vulnerable community is nothing short of miraculous. CRS is proud of this lifesaving partnership.