Concern Blogs

Typical scene in informal slums of Haiti. Some 42 percent of Haitians had no access to clean drinking water even before the earthquake. Photo: Megan Christensen, Concern Worldwide

I arrived in Haiti the end of 2009, when the earthquake had not yet devastated the capital of Port-au-Prince. Initially, I was intimidated by the robust presence of the United Nations police and peacekeeping forces. But, according to Concern’s Haiti staff, the UN presence had played a major role in stabilizing this island nation and improving the security situation for the people living here.

At that time, Haiti’s streets were vibrant and full of life and despite the many challenges people seemed happy and hopeful about a more prosperous future.

According to reports from my colleagues in the field, that resilience has not been hampered by the recent disaster.

I accompanied the Child Survival Program Manager and two Health Officers to the Cite Okay slum within Port-au-Prince, one of the areas where Concern works. Here I met with one of Concern’s youth health volunteers, Michel Berteloe, who was responsible for twenty households in his area.

Michel is aged 17, and is one of several health volunteers that Concern has called on to help monitor the health of families living in the informal slum area.

Here many endure a life without clean water or sanitation exposing them to health risks that are often unknown to them. Michel was trained by Concern to teach health education in his community, screen young children for malnutrition, and advocate for behavior change in areas like breastfeeding and the importance of eating a varied diet.

Michel would educate people about the benefits of purifying water prior to drinking to prevent illness and diarrhea. He visited pregnant mothers, and talked about the signs to watch out for; the need to closely monitor the child during the first weeks after childbirth and about what to expect.

Concern volunteer Michel (17) visits with Gene Maguila Elisse and her newborn. Photo: Megan Christensen, Concern Worldwide.

He also watched out for the basic health of the community, and alerted his local health clinic if somebody was in need of assistance. Despite the fact that the earthquake hit, Michel, and volunteers like him, continue their work. These days, their duties encompass distributions of water and other essential items to those displaced by the disaster.

I visited one of the homes under Michel’s jurisdiction and met with the mother of the house, Gene Maguila Elisse. Gene spoke very highly of her experience with Michel. She had recently given birth and told us that the support she received from Michel had been extremely helpful.

Michel visited her every other day during her pregnancy—usually on his way home from school. Together, the volunteer and mother prepared a birth plan and determined actions that needed to be taken following the birth of the child.

Without this information, Jean would not have known how or where to seek care, who to call during an emergency or how to manage, should she or her newborn daughter become ill.

I am tremendously proud of our youth volunteers and their ownership of the program here in which they work within the community to improve the health and living conditions of mothers and children.

Not only are they educating people and facilitating access to basic services, but our volunteers proactively prevent acute malnutrition by screening children on a regular basis.

Michel uses a plastic color-coded arm band (MUAC), to measure the circumference of the child’s upper arm which can then indicate the degree to which the child could be suffering. If he finds cases of acute malnutrition, he will immediately alert his local health facility and further action will be taken.

Through our work in Child Survival, Concern is striving to educate and empower communities to achieve sustainable improvements in health and reduce the instance of unnecessary deaths with low-cost sustainable solutions that will save countless lives.

In 2010, Concern had planned to provide training to 500 youth community volunteers like Michel who would screen more than 16,000 children under the age of five for malnutrition around the capital of Port-au-Prince. That figure now will likely increase.

Chronic malnutrition had been a problem in Haiti even before the disaster with an  estimated 10,000 children in Port-au-Prince affected.

Since the earthquake, Concern’s efforts have been scaled up to extend to an emergency health program which includes nutrition support and counseling to mothers, pregnant women, and children under the age of five in 11 sites around Port-au-Prince.