Striving to End Child Mortality
The St. Damien Hospital in Tabarre, one of the districts of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, is a unique specialized clinic for children and their mothers. Each year, it provides medical assistance to more than 80,000 patients. Both the personnel and the patients consider the clinic’s director, Jacqueline Gautier, to be its heart and soul. Having weathered many trials and tribulations together with her country, doctor Gautier believes in the nation’s future as she trains a new generation of pediatricians in Haiti.
In 1993 Jacqueline Gautier was appointed to a small children’s hospice at Tabarre. The facility’s team quickly decided that instead of comforting children who are dying, they would try to give them an opportunity to live. The hospice was gradually transformed into a children’s hospital, but was unable to accommodate all the patients who required treatment.
Difficult choices
Her dream of building a new children’s hospital was so powerful that Jacqueline wasn’t discouraged by ongoing military conflicts ravaging the country and by how difficult it was to import the necessary equipment into a state that was under international embargo at the time. By 2006, a former hotel was remodeled as a new building for the St. Damien Children’s Hospital with 213 beds, fully equipped to treat children with oncological and infectious diseases and AIDS.
Every morning, parents bring more than 100 children to the clinic’s gates.
There’s still not enough room for everyone and the nurses have to make difficult choices, selecting those who can be helped.
“Over many years of work we have set a certain procedure: first we take the kids in critical condition, then those from the waiting list, and then as many as we can fit. We also take the families’ social situation into account,” says Jacqueline.
Haiti is one of the world’s most overpopulated countries: it has three times the population of Armenia but an approximately equal land area. Children account for over 40 percent of Haiti’s nine-million-strong population and the country has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world. Despite all the efforts of the St. Damien Hospital’s staff, every month they lose some 20 little patients.
The power within
Political crises and conflicts, disease outbreaks and natural disasters plague the Caribbean island republic on a regular basis. The country is yet to overcome the consequences of the cataclysmic earthquake of 2010, which claimed more than 200,000 lives. More than 300,000 were injured, another 869 went missing. Thousands of houses and almost all the hospitals were destroyed, and three million people were left without a roof over their heads.
The earthquake was a personal tragedy for Jacqueline — her husband died and she sustained injuries. Having recovered from her losses and with her health restored, Jacqueline went right back to the hospital, where plenty of work awaited: soon after the earthquake, a cholera epidemic swept through the country. Doctor Gautier insisted that a special ward be opened for the ill and set about standardizing procedures for combatting the disease despite the collapsed healthcare system.
“Generosity and kindness are humans’ natural qualities. We see a lot of such behavior during the earthquakes. It’s not necessarily help from the outside. People who are neighbors also help each other.”
“I remember back in 1988, when Charles Aznavour was already a rather well-known French singer, he turned the world’s attention to the earthquake in Armenia. Generosity and kindness are humans’ natural qualities. We see a lot of such behavior during the earthquakes. It’s not necessarily help from the outside. People who are neighbors also help each other. They are still scared, they are still shocked, but they share their shelters, food and necessities with each other,” says Jacqueline.
Refusing to leave
A female doctor in a top management role is hard to come by in Haiti. Emigration from the country spurred by the epidemic has left Haiti without many professionals. Those who went to work abroad transfer money back home to their relatives, providing the fuel to power the country.
In 1981 Jacqueline received a medical license that gives her the right practice in the United States, but she never left Haiti.
“Back in 1994 life in Haiti was practically impossible. One gallon of gasoline cost $20, and there were no trade relations with other countries because we were under embargo. Back then I would think: ‘What am I doing here?’ I could’ve moved to another place, but I don’t regret staying,” Jacqueline admits.
She understands her colleagues and everyone else who decides to emigrate, because this move — which requires adapting to difficult circumstances and earning enough to support family back in Haiti — requires courage and decisiveness. Jacqueline also says that many emigrants end up helping their homeland. “I have some colleagues who’ve returned after 20 years of living abroad in order to improve medical education in their native country, in order to invest in it. For the country to develop we need people, we need human resources. Somebody has to stay. It was a question of choice, and this choice came naturally to me,” Jacqueline explains.
What goes around, comes around
The hospital’s familiar walls have long been a fixture in Jacqueline’s life. Her mother was a nurse at a small hospital in a suburban town. “There was only one physician and one nurse in that hospital,” Jacqueline remembers. “This life inspired me. Every time I enter our hospital, I remember my mother, the way she would walk into the clinic when I was small.”
Jacqueline has an uncanny ability to inspire people with her optimism. Over the course of the children hospital’s 22-year-long existence, she’s been able to establish partnerships with a number of charity organizations in the United States and Europe. Nonetheless, fundraising to keep the hospital open and running remains her biggest challenge. “People respect our efforts and achievements, but sometimes they get tired of helping poor countries. To keep the fundraising process rolling we have to be extra creative with it. It’s a 24/7 job,” Jacqueline admits.
In 2013 Jacqueline Gautier established a residency program to train young pediatricians and there are 18 doctors now participating in it. “Before we would hire professional doctors, but now we train them ourselves. We invest in our future,” Jacqueline says.
“I once read that kindness is the essential element that will save the world from all this consumerism and violence.
We should encourage kindness. We need to have a critical mass of kind people. This is why I think that support from kind people will make our world better.
What goes around, comes around: if you serve people, you’ll be rewarded,” Jacqueline believes.
