Thursday, January 5, 2012

Boundless Compassion+Hard Work

Remembering her first trip to Haiti, retired nurse Genie Ashworth laughs as she recalls her primitive accommodations. “There were 12 of us and we all slept in two rooms on the floor or in five-foot long bunks. We had to use trashcans filled with water to bath ourselves ” said Ashworth, one of the founding members of Haiti Medical Missions of Memphis (HMMoM). “When we got back home, we were covered in red bug bites and we all looked like we had chicken pox.”

Fast-forward 13 years and Ashworth is busy finalizing preparations for the 13th Annual 24-Hour Tour d’Esprit this weekend, Sept. 30-Oct. 1. The running event provides the majority of the funding for the now bustling Holy Spirit Clinic in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti, a medical facility Ashworth helped open just a few years after her first trip in 1997.

“It’s really overwhelming how much it’s grown,” said Ashworth. She muses about the clinics humble beginnings. “Haiti Medical Missions of Memphis was a ma and pa organization on a shoe-string budget,” she said. In 1997, Ashworth went to Haiti along with other medical professionals from the Holy Spirit Church after one of its former parishioners, who started a school just outside Port-au-Prince, requested a medical team to treat his students.

In spite of the hardships of the first trip, Ashworth and others returned to the school several times over the next three years because of what they saw. In addition to helping the children at the school, she and the other volunteers would travel to surrounding communities, hospitals, clinics and orphanages. “These people were the poorest of the poor and if we wanted to make an impact, we would keep going back to Haiti,” she said.

The idea of opening a permanent clinic began to take shape. Dr. Gordon Kraus, a Memphis internist and a founding member of HMMoM, is a running enthusiast who has participated in numerous marathons. He decided to combine his love of running and passion for preventive medicine by hosting a running event to raise funds for the charity.

As Memphis did not have a 24-hour running race, he believed the uniqueness of the fundraiser would attract people. Additionally, it would benefit the Memphis community by providing an opportunity to have fun while exercising.

During the 24-Hour Tour d’Esprit, runners compete with a team or as an individual and complete as many laps around a one-mile loop in 24 hours. “The first year, two of us sat at a table and counted the runners’ laps as they went by,” said Dr. Kraus. Despite its austerity, the race succeeded in funding the building and initial operating costs of the clinic.

Ashworth and Dr. Kraus returned to Haiti, cash in hand, to purchase property and start their mission. While there they met Fr. Joseph Durante, a missionary priest from Italy, who offered to build the clinic on the grounds of the St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Croix-des-Bouquets which is 12 miles outside Port-au-Prince.

“We all just sat under a mango tree and talked. The clinic evolved from there, and we settled everything with a handshake,” said Ashworth. In 2001, the clinic became fully operational.
The free clinic grew steadily and became vital to the Haitian people in Croix- des-Bouquets who previously had no access to health care. However, everything changed on January 12, 2010 when a deadly 7.0 earthquake flattened Haiti in minutes.

“So many hospitals and medical facilities were destroyed and we were still standing,” Ashworth said. Although the clinic itself is only about 2,000 square feet, it became a general medical facility and surgery center utilized by organizations from all over the world.
Overwhelmed with patients, the clinics supply of medicine and bandages quickly diminished.

Instead of collapsing along with rest of the Port-au-Prince region, the clinic persevered. “We expanded so quickly after the earthquake,” Ashworth said.

Donations from all over the Memphis poured into the Holy Spirit Church, which was serving as the headquarters for HMMoM. Within a few months after the earthquake, HMMoM began networking with the United Nations and various non-governmental organizations from all over the world to distribute the supplies to wherever in Haiti they were needed the most.

In the weeks after the earthquake, Catholic Relief Services gave HMMoM a grant to start an inpatient rehabilitation clinic so Haitians with catastrophic injures could receive occupational and physical therapy services. When the grant money ran out in December of 2010, the inpatient rehabilitation facility closed. However, an outpatient physical and occupational therapy clinic, with a fully equipped gym, remains.

“Kids with disabilities who previously had zero hope now have a place to go where they will be acknowledged as human beings,” said Susie Kraus, wife of Dr. Kraus, an occupational therapist who was instrumental in establishing the rehabilitation clinic. “The therapists are able to help these children and mothers with equipment and a plan that gives them hope they never had before.”

HMMoM now staffs and stocks a full-service medical center with an emphasis on holistic medicine. Along with traditional medical and dental care, it offers multiple wellness clinics for individuals across the lifespan including classes on nutrition, diabetes, hypertension and back care.

The clinic doctors have also been on the frontline combating the cholera epidemic that has cruelly persisted for almost a year. They have developed a strict protocol and there is an isolation room at the clinic designated to treat any suspected cases.

As the recovery in Haiti has been painfully slow, medical care continues to be in short supply. Consequently, The Holy Spirit Clinic has become one of the most important health care facilities in the Port-au-Prince area. The number of patients seen at the clinic has doubled since the quake and doctors are currently seeing almost 200 patients per day, five days per week.

To accommodate this, HMMoM increased its number of employees from six to 27. Expenses subsequently have grown. “We went from spending $5,000 per month (before the quake) to $15,000 per month (after the quake),” Dr. Kraus said.
Race organizers expect as many as 1,000 runners to participate in the 24-Hour Tour d’Esprit;

Even with this level of community support, having enough money to cover this year’s costs at the facility is a concern.

“We serve an astonishing number of patients with our donated dollars,” said Ms. Kraus. “No one is paid to run our organization. It strictly operates by volunteers. We respect every donated dollar and use it as frugally as possible.”

With the exception of the local Haitian employees, all the medical professionals and the communications director are volunteers who receive a small stipend, food and lodging in exchange for their services. Volunteers with the organization must also pay their travel expenses.

In spite of their concerns, members of the charity continue to look toward the future of the medical facility. “I would like to see the clinic gradually become a Haitian-run facility, “ said Dr. Kraus. HMMoM is realizing this goal, as 17 of its 27 employees are local residents.

Additionally, this month the charity hired its first Haitian-born medical director, Dr. Romel Dorsaint. “God chose me to serve the poor. I’m God’s instrument to share his love with my Haitian brothers and sisters who are suffering in faith,” said Dr. Dorsaint.

Ms. Kraus sees a need for a large benefactor to allow the clinic to continue operating on a large scale. Until then, HMMoM will continue to rely on the Memphis community to support the 24-Hour Tour d’Esprit, enabling them to provide hope in the form of good health in a country where both are in short supply.