Vitamins! (and more)

"Rice?! We don't need more rice, we need vitamins!" 

Such was the proclaim of this astute Haitian gentleman last year as he overhead us speaking with the Marines about supply needs and food rations. The Marines were in charge of coordinating food distribution points and the Bel-Aire Church, home to our Heart to Heart clinic on it's top floor, was one of them in the early days after the earthquake.

A year later, the needs in Haiti remain relatively unchanged. Both nutrition (in the form of food and vitamins) and medicines are in short supply. Shipments are held up at the ports for months by political red tape and palms that beg to be greased, while a malnourished populace is left all the more vulnerable to disease and lacking access to medicines that could easily cure them.

As many of you have read in the papers, cholera has swept across Haiti. Since October it has claimed over 4,000 lives. Cholera need not be so fatal. In industrialized countries, fatality is less than 1%.  However, without access to oral rehydration salts, and the occasionally-needed antibiotic, fatality can reach 50%. This is Haiti's reality. 

Aside from rehydration salts, the wish-list of "greatest need" medications to replenish the Heart to Heart clinic pharmacy is headed by: vitamins, infant tylenol, children's tylenol, "adult" tylenol, antacids. Seemingly mundane medications that make a world of difference to a people with ailments large and small, and no access to the over-the-counter meds we take for granted every time we open our cupboards to reach for them.

Aaron and I will be taking nearly 200 lbs of these and other medicines with us. The best way to deliver meds, as with all other supplies, is by direct delivery. Bypassing the sea ports, our medicines will make it past customs snug in suitcases waved on after a $20 under-the-table exchange.

We have been fortunate to find a whole-sale supplier that makes these medicines relatively affordable: $8 for 1000 multivitamins, $5 for several hundred antacids, $18 for 1000 antibiotic pills and so on. We have ordered several hundred dollars of medicines to assure we'll have at our disposal the medicines needed as we bring our mobile clinic into the communities. And we will leave the pharmacy shelves stocked, at least for a short while.

If you would like to help us off-set the costs of these medicines (and vitamins!), please make a donation by following our link at right. All amounts are greatly appreciated by us, and even more so, by the Haitian people. All dollars translate to medicines and medical care. If you have family, friends, co-workers, who would be interested in donating medicines to Haiti, please pass along our blog information.

~ Maryclaire