LiveBeyond welcomes the clinical skills and spare equipment of healthcare providers and suppliers to further its humanitarian mission in Thomazeau, Haiti.
When a 2010 earthquake devastated Haiti, trauma surgeon David Vanderpool, M.D., was quick to shutter his Nashville practice and redirect medical relief efforts of LiveBeyond to the epicenter of the disaster in Port au Prince. Five years earlier, he launched the faith-based humanitarian organization bringing medical services, clean water initiatives, sustainable agriculture projects and microfinance programs to hard-hit regions across the developing world.
The quake made plain the dire living conditions that spanned the tiny island nation, one of the poorest and neediest places on earth where illiteracy is commonplace and access to basic medical care is virtually absent. So LiveBeyond created a permanent base of operations in Haiti with the purchase of 65 acres in the region of Thomazeau.
Dr. Vanderpool’s work here inspired dozens of U.S. healthcare providers to donate needed funds and equipment in addition to serving directly on medical mission trips. Among LiveBeyond’s most ardent supporters is HealthTrust member RegionalCare Hospital Partners of Brentwood, Tennessee, now assisting in the creation of a healthcare complex to serve the 200,000 people populating Thomazeau. The infrastructure will include a 50-bed hospital with four surgical suites and an OB/GYN facility, with the capacity to serve 225 patients daily. A medical clinic on the 65-acre campus is already fully operational, thanks in part to physicians and dentists who regularly travel here to supplement on-site staff.
“I’ve had the pleasure of serving with the LiveBeyond organization in Thomazeau, Haiti, two times. I find myself longing to return to help continue the necessary work that is being done there.”
— Andy Garlington, Senior Director, Financial Operations, Community Health Systems
LiveBeyond would welcome the clinical skills and spare equipment of other healthcare providers and suppliers to further its mission in Thomazeau. At any one time, 8,000 women in the region are pregnant and 98 percent of them deliver on dirt floors. The infant mortality rate nationwide is a staggering 7 percent.
The organization’s Maternal Health Program currently reaches 200 to 250 women monthly, improving their perinatal mortality rate by 66 percent and reducing complications for their newborns. The medical clinic spares countless other children under age 5 certain death from malaria and HIV, in addition to offering access to routine medical and dental treatment, and physical and occupational therapies to the physically handicapped. It also provides Haitian nursing and medical students with clinical experience that is unaffordable elsewhere.
Growth of the medical complex in Thomazeau has enlarged the need for donated medical equipment, for which LiveBeyond handles all the transportation logistics. Low-tech equipment is in particularly high demand since electricity here is all self-generated.
On the wish list:
• Hand-cranked beds
• Syringe pumps
• IV poles
• Bedside tables
• Birthing tables
• C-section packs & instrumentation
• Old ultrasound machines
• OR equipment (e.g., lighting, anesthesia machine, electric cautery, oxygen generators)
• Dental equipment (e.g., tabletop sterilizers, suction, oxygen and gases, handheld dental drills and saws)
*Note: Please contact LiveBeyond before de-installing any large pieces of equipment.
Visit livebeyond.org to donate equipment, make a monetary gift or volunteer for a medical mission week. LiveBeyond houses more than 700 visiting caregivers each year at a 62-bed on-site guesthouse.
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