Working for a healthier Haiti

The work Dr. Paul Ullom-Minnich '89 has done in Haiti for nearly a decade came full circle this summer when he returned there with a group of people to tour the country and at what its needs are today. He first traveled to Haiti with other physicians andcounselors in 2010 after a devastating earthquake leftmuch of the country in ruin. He spent a week travelingaround the country providing medical assistance in makeshiftclinics. His experience there led to further discussions about what could be done to continue assisting a country with tremendous needs.

“It really started as a grassroots effort,” Dr. Ullom-Minnichsaid. “It involved a lot of different people across the country working together to make it happen. It’s really blown intosomething so much larger now. It’s more of a public health effort than a medical response effort.”

He brought the idea to the Church of the Brethren,which was supportive as long as he could find funding.Over the next year, the idea evolved and the Haiti Medical Project launched its first mobile clinic. Today, direct health care services are provided at 30 sites led by teams of all-Haitian physicians, nurses, and support staff. The clinics serve nearly 40,000 people with an average of more than 165 patients at each clinic every year, according to the organization’s website.

The Haiti Medical Project is supervised largely by volunteers in the United States and in Haiti with a few paid staff positions in Haiti. Dr. Ullom-Minnich is a volunteer with the title of consultant to the executive and convener of the Haitian Medical Project Coordinating Committee. His father, Dale, also joined the effort and is a leading fundraiser for it. Dr. Ullom-Minnich occasionally goes to Haiti, not as much now as he did in the beginning, and he says that his assistance is not as much medical as it is organizational.

“There are all sorts of challenges in Haiti medically that I am not good at, but I am good at organization and providing an outside medical viewpoint,” he said. “The Haitian physicians and nurses are all trained there and much better at dealing with the medical challenges there than I am.”

After the natural disaster in 2010, many organizations from around the world arrived to offer aid to Haiti. Many were strictly there to provide temporary relief while others stayed on. Dr. Ullom-Minnich thinks that the connections made with Haitian communities is what sets the Haiti Medical Project apart from some of the other aid organizations.

“I think it is different because what we do is driven by the local needs,” he said. “The community looks at what the needs are and comes up with the ideas to meet those needs.”

Additionally, The Haiti Medical Project fosters the Haitian economy by buying its supplies locally and hiring its medical staff locally, Dr. Ullom-Minnich said.

“Two-thirds of Haitians do not have full-time jobs,” he said. “That includes doctors and nurses, so it’s not hard to staff our clinics. It’s a model that is meant to improve Haiti beyond its medical needs.”

Working with the communities that have clinics, it became apparent that preventive measures could greatly increase the wellness of a community. Clean water is the number one issue affecting community health.

“A medical condition is usually the end of the road,” Dr. Ullom-Minnich said. “There are lots of things that lead up to a medical problem, and clean water is probably the number one cause. Communities looked at their needs and saw that if issues could be headed off sooner, medical problems could be prevented.”

Clean water has been a strong focus for many of the communities and an idea that really took off within the McPherson Church of the Brethren, according to Dr. Ullom-Minnich. The church set a goal to raise $100,000 this year and is on target to do that. Haitian communities focusing on clean water have many different needs. Some need wells; others have wells but need purification systems in order to use and sell the water. Other communities are focused on rainwater capture systems. According to Dr. Ullom-Minnich, the money raised by the McPherson church will cover almost seven different projects across the country. The needs in Haiti are immense. There are many third-world countries in the Western Hemisphere, but Haiti is the poorest by far. Eighty percent of the population lives in poverty, and nearly two-fifths of all Haitians depend on agriculture to make a living and are vulnerable to damages from frequent natural disasters. The lack of infrastructure limits how effective the government and other organizations can be. “There is no comparison to anything like it that we can see in the United States,” Dr. Ullom-Minnich said. “Most people there don’t even have access to a pit toilet. That would be a luxury in Haiti.” Dr. Ullom-Minnich admits that measuring success in Haiti is difficult. He suspects that even after 30 years it will be hard to see if the efforts of The Haiti Medical Project have made Haiti a healthier place to live.

“You have to have faith that what you are doing is making a difference,” he said. “There’s not always statistics that can measure what we do. We are building personal relationships and helping people make connections.” He hopes that even more connections and ideas will come out of the trip he was part of this summer. A group from the McPherson Church of the Brethren that included students as young as middle school and high school, as well as faculty and alumni from McPherson College, traveled to Haiti to look at what has been done there so far and what still needs to be done. Dr. Ullom-Minnich is hopeful that just like when he returned from Haiti the first time nearly 10 years ago, this group will continue to discuss what they saw and what might come of it. “A large part of the trip was making interpersonal connections and building relationships,” he said. “This was unique, and I’m not sure where it will go but I think it will lead to a next step, possibly looking at sanitation and what will work best. It makes a difference when you see Haiti and meet the people. Nothing can replace that. Who knows where this may lead 10 years from now?”