October 21, 2019

Dear Friends and Supporters,

This has been, and continues to be, a particularly troubling time for Haiti and for our efforts. Many of you may have heard or read about the ongoing civil crisis in Haiti. The existential threat to the people of Haiti at this time had not until today been stressed in the national media. Read today’s NY Times and earlier reporting in the Miami Herald or Haiti’s Le Nouvelliste, you’ll understand. Tens of thousands of citizens have been on the streets daily demonstrating, sometimes forcefully, with reason, to oust the President. Gunshots, burning tires and barricades. These are cogent responses to an impossible situation for the people of Haiti.

The crisis has impacted Haiti Cardiac Alliance, our partners and our patients in many ways. Our team on the ground has been threatened, stopped at barricades. We have had to charter planes where we would normally have used a moto-transport. Our staff in Haiti have not been able to drive our vehicle due to roadblocks and fuel shortages; many of our patients have not been able to travel to the hospital for appointments or medication refills; and routine items such as passport and visas have become much more difficult to obtain. At the end of the day, our costs have gone up, but we have continued on where many organizations have stopped.

Despite this political crisis, we are not standing still. With your help and the help of many like you who have seen what we’ve done, we fielded a screening trip to rural Haiti in mid-July where we saw and diagnosed over 40 kids in two days, with clinical exams and echocardiograms. We hope we will get most of them to surgery. Indeed HCA has used this same “whatever it takes” philosophy to get over 60 patients to surgery since the unrest started, and we hope to get at least a dozen more to care before the end of the year, even in spite of the very serious challenges and risks. Getting each of our patients to surgery under these conditions, however, does involve taking on extra expenses so that we can be sure that each child safely reaches the care that he or she so urgently needs.

We thank you for your solidarity and support, without which we could have never facilitated life-saving surgery for over 450 Haitian children and young adults since 2013. Haiti is going through one of the most difficult political crises in decades – but this is inspiring HCA to work even harder to serve our patients. In this difficult time, we ask you to increase your support as much as you can, digging deep so that these young patients don’t suffer the consequences of a political crisis they had no role in creating.

We can’t thank you enough for your continued trust and support. We really need your help at this time.

Please consider making a special online donation to help us meet our urgent crisis-related costs, or mail a check to the address at the bottom of this email.

Best,

Jim Wilentz
Board Chair,

Haiti Cardiac Alliance

47 Maple Street, Suite 213
Burlington, VT 05401-4956

www.haiticardiac.org

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