Today, he welcomes his patients in Coteaux, a remote town in Haiti’s southern department. “Together with the team on site, I organize the various mobile clinics that have to travel around the region. Before any activity, I contact a site manager, who gives the doctors permission to set up there. Collaboration with community leaders, he continues, facilitates the smooth running of the activity.”
These mobile clinics, staffed by doctors, nurses and psychologists, are deployed in the field, to provide free medical care and psychological support to survivors of the August 14, 2021 earthquake and to people deprived of access to health services. Priority is given to earthquake victims, the vast majority of whom have neither access nor the financial means to seek treatment in an appropriate health center. The clinics also receive many elderly people and pregnant women, who often walk for hours to reach the assembly point.
The running of the mobile clinics
the clinicians are organized into 4 sectors: the patient triage area, the consultation cubicles, the pharmacy and the dressing and emergency case management cubicle. A work area is also set up for psychologists, who can receive patients in groups or individually according to their preferences.
Medical teams receive between 150 and 300 people per day per mobile clinic. Throughout the day they see patients presenting with hypertension, diabetes, skin diseases and infections, among other conditions. It’s not always easy to serve all the people at the clinic,” explains Dr Michel. Often, some of our medicines run out, most notably vitamins, and antibiotics run out more quickly.”
Frédérique Montas / PIH
Taking care of people who are seriously ill and need tests to confirm a diagnosis is also a concern. For many of these patients, follow-up in a suitable hospital environment would be more appropriate. However, these mobile clinics remain t an effective way of helping people living in the most remote areas.
What always surprises me is that it’s usually the whole family that comes for consultation: father, mother and children because In addition to treating the sick, Zanmi Lasante clinicians also promote good hygiene practices. - Dr. Edouard.
“Beyond medical care,” he adds, “these people are in great need of financial support; I receive them with a feeling of helplessness sometimes,” he says, “because I can only provide them with medical help. Many of them really need psychological support. A single consultation at the mobile clinic is not enough”