[NYTr] Haiti Report for September 10, 2007

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

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Haiti Report for September 10, 2007

The Haiti Report is a summary compilation of events as described in
Haiti and international media prepared by Konbit Pou Ayiti/KONPAY. It
does not reflect the opinions of any individual or organization. This
service is intended to create a better understanding of the situation
in Haiti by presenting the reader with reports that provide a variety
of perspectives on the situation. To make a donation to support this
service: Konbit Pou Ayiti, 7 Wall Street, Gloucester, MA, 01930 or
visit our website: www.konpay.org

IN THIS REPORT:

- Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti is Two Years Old
- Navy Ship Comfort Visits Haiti as Part of Effort to Counter Chavez
- New Literacy Campaign Announced
- Nine Latin Americans with Peacekeepers in Haiti Support
   One-Year Extension of Mission
- Dominican Republic Denies People of Haitian Descent Birth Certificates
- Dr. Paul Farmer Commentary in Forbes

Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti is Two Years Old:

It has been more than two years since Wyclef Jean started his
foundation to help those living in his native Haiti, and he says he's
seeing the results of his humanitarian efforts on the ground. "I'm
seeing major progress with the kids because the revolution starts
with the mind, the real revolution, and this is really the turning
point for a lot of kids, like they really feel like there is hope,"
he said in an interview Sunday. "Before me, they feel like when
people left Haiti they just left, you know, and they would come back
once in a while. But really with this, they feel like there's hope
for the future." The Grammy winner founded Yele Haiti in January
2005, which promotes music, sports and media as a way to bring jobs
and development to the troubled country. Jean recently held a free
concert for more than 50,000 people on the beach in the seaside town
of Jacmel, the first such show in Haiti since 1997. "Through the
music we're actually able to educate," he said. "When you're in a
population where it's very poor but the country is very rich, we find
through music and through sports we're able to change a lot of
things." In January 2006, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt joined Jean on
a trip to Haiti to bring attention to the plight of the children
there, and visited a school supported by Jean's foundation. Jean was
appointed last January as a roving ambassador for Haiti by President
Rene Preval. "The president appointed me that because he's seen the
work that I was doing for the past year, so being a roving ambassador
is just a continuation of what I've been doing, which is promoting my
country in a positive light."  (Canadian Press, 9/10)


Navy Ship Comfort Visits Haiti as Part of Effort to Counter Chavez:

A huge U.S. Navy hospital ship brought state-of-the-art medical care
to the Western Hemisphere's poorest country this week during a
regional goodwill mission aimed at countering leftist Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez's influence. The USNS Comfort, a 900-foot-long
floating hospital built for wounded American soldiers, carries more
than 600 medical volunteers who have provided free vaccinations, eye
exams, dental treatment and surgical procedures to more than 85,000
patients in a dozen countries during their tour of Latin America and
the Caribbean. The volunteers also train local doctors, build clinics
and treat sick animals, trying to generate goodwill in a region the
Bush administration has been accused of slighting as it focuses on
U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and terror concerns at home.
"We are here to try and make a difference, not just in the short term
but in the long term as well. It's a win-win for all involved," Capt.
Bob Kapcio, the Comfort's commanding officer, said during the ship's
arrival ceremony in Haiti. Some critics question the long-term impact
of the Comfort's four-month voyage. The American ship only stays in
port for a few days in each country and at the moment has no firm
plans to return to the region.

At Port-au-Prince's seaport, dozens of patients strapped on life
vests and boarded ferries to reach the Comfort, a converted oil
supertanker whose gleaming surgical center, dental ward and
pediatrics unit provide a level of medical care beyond most Haitians'
wildest dreams. Haiti is so poor that public hospitals are strewn
with patients on floors for lack of beds. Private hospitals turn away
even gunshot victims who cannot afford to pay. "If I went to a
hospital in Haiti, this would have cost a lot of money so this really
is a miracle for me," said Gertrude Fortune, 49, laying on a hospital
bed before undergoing hernia surgery. The Comfort's mission has been
earning rave reviews, from impoverished villagers to heads of state.

When President Bush announced the Comfort's mission in March he
promised more U.S. help for health and education in a region oil-rich
Venezuela has been showering with aid. Chavez's government has
pledged more than $8.8 billion to the region this year, although it
isn't known how much has actually been delivered. By comparison, $3
billion in American grants and loans reached the region in 2005,
according to the most recent figures available. Washington is Haiti's
single largest donor, giving more than $850 million between 1995 and
2003, according to the State Department's Web site. The U.S. has
donated more than $390 million to help Haiti rebuild since a 2004
uprising ousted then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But Chavez
also has become a huge donor for Haiti, promising $221 million in aid
projects so far this year.  (AP, 9/7)


New Literacy Campaign Announced:

The Haitian Government initiated today - the International Day
Against Illiteracy - a massive campaign against illiteracy, according
to a statement issued by Carol Joseph, the cabinet secretary in
charge of literacy. The campaign's kickoff will take place today at
the Champs de Mars, the main park in Port-au-Prince. The campaign
will target 3 million illiterates over a period of 3 years. It will
cost $186 million and will be pattered after the Cuban method "Yo si
puedo" or "Wi mwen kapab" ("Yes I can") in Creole. Cuban will give
Haiti 10,000 tv sets, 10,000 videos and 3 million books to help it
implement the program, which will be carried out in Creole, the
language spoken by all Haitians. 75,000 literacy centers will open
throughout the country and will host 40 students daily. The campaign
will create 100,000 jobs. During the last 60 years several literacy
drives were carried out in the country. They did not, however,
succeed in reducing the illiteracy rate significantly. (Alterpresse,
translated by Max Blanchet, 9/8)


Nine Latin Americans with Peacekeepers in Haiti Support One-Year
Extension of Mission:

Nine Latin American nations with U.N. peacekeepers deployed in Haiti
voiced support for extending the mission for another year but
declined to say when they would remove their troops. The U.N.
Security Council is expected to renew the mandate of the 8,800-
strong, Brazilian-led force on Oct. 14. On Tuesday, defense ministers
from Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala, Peru,
Uruguay and Paraguay traveled to Haiti to show their support for
Haitian President Rene Preval, who last year authorized the U.N.
force to take a firmer hand against street gangs blamed for violence.
Chilean Defense Minister Jose Goni said the countries agreed to
support a 12-month extension of the U.N. mission, which arrived in
2004 to restore order after a violent uprising. "Our work (in the
U.N. mission) has helped achieve a notable level of public security
and that allows to begin thinking about ways to expand our work,"
Goni told reporters. The officials did not address how long their
troops would remain in Haiti. U.N. officials have said peacekeepers
should stay at least until the end of Preval's term in 2011. It was
the first time Latin American countries have gathered in Haiti to
discuss the future of the peacekeeping force, which consists mostly of
South and Central American soldiers and police. The force's current
mandate covers mainly Haiti's security needs, but Preval's government
has been pressuring the world body to funnel more resources into
development projects for schools, hospitals, roads and sanitation.
(AP, 9/4)


Dominican Republic Denies People of Haitian Descent Birth Certificates:

Authorities in the Dominican Republic are denying growing numbers of
people of Haitian descent identity documents on the argument that
their parents are illegal immigrants. The founder and director of the
Movement of Dominican-Haitian Women (MUDHA), Sonia Pierre, complained
that the civil registrars office continues to demand that Dominican
citizens of Haitian descent present their parents documents as a
requisite for obtaining copies of their birth certificates. The
Haitian-Dominican activist who defends the rights of immigrants said
the officials are fully aware that the applicants were registered at
birth by their parents on forms handed out by the authorities to
Haitian "braceros" or sugar cane cutters. Copies of birth
certificates are necessary to register in school, obtain an identity
card, take out a passport, and acquire a voter registration card.
Under the constitution, anyone born in the Dominican Republic has a
right to citizenship, with the exception of the children of diplomats
or children born to parents in transit.

Pierre herself is all too familiar with the problem. In March,
officials at the registrars office attempted to revoke her Dominican
birth certificate based on questions about the legal status of her
parents and the validity of their identification documents. After her
case made international headlines, the investigation into the
legality of her documents was called off. Dominican authorities have
recurred more and more frequently to this practice "since the
announcement that my documents were going to be annulled," Pierre
told IPS. The activist, who received the annual award of the Robert
F. Kennedy Memorial Centre for Human Rights last year, has drawn up a
list of over 200 cases of Haitian-Dominicans who have been denied
birth certificates. She plans to present the list to the registrars
office to get the authorities to correct the situation, and will
continue to press the case if she fails in her endeavor.  (IPS, 8/28)


Dr. Paul Farmer Commentary in Forbes

Interviewed by Sonia Narang  (Forbes, 9/4)

I was lucky enough to make my first trip to Haiti almost 25 years
ago. Haiti has been the best teacher I've ever had (and that's saying
a lot).

Working there taught me several things: that all enduring, good work
is done by teams (no doctor can be effective alone); that public
health and public infrastructure is always important (even the
biggest and most beautiful mission hospital cannot serve the people
of an entire region, much less a nation); that community-based care,
relying on village health workers is the secret to success for
programs for chronic diseases, including AIDS and tuberculosis; that
some services should not be sold, even for the tiniest price, because
there will always be some who cannot pay these "users' fees," as
they're called, and the ones who cannot pay are precisely the people
we came to serve in the first place. These are also the people who
are, often enough, hungry. There's only one treatment, we learned,
for that affliction: food.

With these hard, if obvious, lessons came great success for small
projects, but also a haunting doubt: Could quality (and comprehensive
and complex) health services ever be "scaled up" in some of the
poorest countries in the world? The very countries needing such scale
up most?

Over the past decade, our work in Haiti expanded rapidly whenever we
followed these principles: Over the past two years what was in 1985 a
tiny clinic served, through the public sector and with the help of an
army of community health workers, millions of Haitians. But still we
had not scaled up in the conventional sense--nationwide.

We still work throughout central Haiti but have also worked in seven
other countries, pursuing, along with thousands of others, two goals
in tension: high-quality health care for the patient in front of us,
but thinking, whenever possible, of the tens of millions more who
need the same services.

The tension is still there, and scale up remains an elusive goal when
comprehensive care is the deliverable. It's one thing to have a
national vaccination campaign--easily enough done--but quite another
to rebuild public infrastructure, offer care for maladies ranging
from AIDS to obstructed labor (which requires, of course, a Cesarean
section, which in turn requires electricity and an operating room and
someone who can perform the procedure), and to recruit and train that
army of community health workers. It's hard, but not impossible. The
potential health workers are there wherever there is rural
unemployment; but they have to be paid if they're to dedicate most of
their time to this important, lifesaving work.

In 2005, together with the Clinton Foundation and the Government of
Rwanda, we were invited to two rural health districts counting close
to half a million people. There were no doctors in these districts.
"Can you scale up a Haiti-style project there?" they asked. We
thought we could, and two years later I think we have.

Then came the tension, this time followed by hope and excitement:
Could it be that in this small, mountainous nation of over 8 million
people we could scale up a rural health model for all Rwandans, over
80% of whom live in rural regions? Why believe it possible there more
than elsewhere? What was in Rwanda that had been missing or in short
supply in the other countries in which we'd worked?

First, there was good governance, security and a great deal of what's
termed "political will": that is, the *government* wanted these
services to be available to all Rwandans. Second, although Rwanda is
terribly poor, and recovering from a genocide, its economy was
growing, not shrinking. Third, although our hosts, partners and
funders had ostensibly invited us to rural Rwanda to do an "AIDS
project," everyone knew that we were in fact there to do a
comprehensive rural health model, and it was working. Fourth, there
are many NGO partners with significant resources which, were they to
contribute to this effort in rural regions, could help achieve these
goals within the public sector.

After working all of my life in global health, I've been lucky to
work on small projects that have grown; to have worked on specific
efforts (such as the treatment of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis
in Peru) that have been scaled up nationally, in the public sector,
by Peruvians.

But here in Rwanda, I'm wondering: Is this the country where a truly
comprehensive health model can reach, in a reasonable amount of time,
all of the rural poor of this country? If we can raise the money,
which we must, I'm betting on Rwanda.

[Dr. Paul Farmer, the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology in
the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, is the
founder of Partners In Health.]

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