Mission Work in Haiti: Treating High Blood Pressure in Rural Haiti
A guest column by Harry Morse, M.D.
As news of gang violence and security collapse in Port au Prince continues to dominate our new cycle, your World Missions Committee thought a timely update from our brothers and sisters in Cange was in order. We have been worried about the safety of our colleagues, but at present, they are all doing reasonably well and working diligently on some of our many shared projects. The Central Plateau, where most of our work is located, has been relatively spared from violence, but has certainly been affected by the collapse of all governmental services.
Our diocese (EDUSC) has been involved in mission work in the Central Plateau of Haiti for over 40 years. Our efforts are focused around public health, education, and agriculture. High blood pressure (hypertension) is a major health problem in Haiti (as it is in the United States) and the African ethnic diaspora has been disproportionally affected. Untreated hypertension can affect both the quantity and quality of life, leading to heart attack, heart, failure, stroke, and kidney failure. Treatment is very effective and greatly reduces these risks, but it requires diagnosis and a prescription for one or more medications. Pills then must be taken on a daily basis; certainly a daunting task in a rural, resource-poor setting!
In 2015 EDUSC developed a program to diagnose and treat hypertension in four rural villages around Cange: Bois Joli, Mont Michelle, Belair, and Chapoteau. Our medical teams (including Bishop Waldo) visited each of the villages, delivering automated blood pressure monitors, and prescribing a simple program of 1-3 medications aiming to control hypertension. Over the past nine years, despite the pandemic and security meltdown, we have expanded our program to 10 villages, each led by their local Community Health Worker (CHW). We now have over 600 patients receiving regular treatment. We meet regularly by Zoom with our physician partners and CHWs in Cange.
More recently, the Clemson Engineers for Developing Communities (CEDC) team has gotten involved and are working with our recent medical school graduates in Haiti to better track our data and streamline our process. We have purchased durable computer tablets for each of the CHWs, programed with software, which allows our medical record data to be uploaded to each patient’s record in Cange and Mirabelais—a significant advance!
Please note that our two recent medical school graduates, Raoul and Malachi are both natives of Cange, educated in our Episcopal school, and attended medical school in Port au Prince with support from our Summits Education university program. What a blessed and exciting return on our long-term investment!
In summary, despite substantial challenges, our work with our friends in Cange and surrounding villages is alive and well.
Thanks be to God for the dedication and courage of our Haitian partners to “Act in the World as the Body of Christ.”