The dwindling number of vowed religious is having an impact on human resources at a busy charity hospital in northern Haiti. With the three Daughters of Charity who anchor the religious mission at Hôpital Sacré Coeur CRUDEM in Milot preparing to leave their posts, the order has given the hospital one year to replace them.
Leaders are looking for either religious or lay Catholics to fill the openings. "In view of the shortage of religious, it has been suggested that possibly we combine members of different orders as volunteers," said Dr. Peter Kelly, an ophthalmologist and surgeon from Palmer, Mass. He chairs the board of the CRUDEM Foundation, a U.S. philanthropy based in Ludlow, Mass. CRUDEM, which stands for Center for Rural Development of Milot, governs the busy 64-bed hospital, a laboratory, an outpatient clinic, a nutrition center for malnourished preschool children and a mobile clinic that travels to four villages.
The system served an estimated 60,000 people in 2007, or roughly one in four people in a catchment area that has a population of 225,000. With a per capita annual income of $380, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, and few patients are able to pay more than a token for care. Kelly said the hospital charges $6 to deliver a baby and 50 cents to see a doctor. "If they don't have the money, we see them for free."
The foundation is working to recruit two or three people willing to make a multiyear commitment to the medical mission. "A recently retired couple with hospital experience would be ideal," Kelly said. One employee would be responsible for managing quality initiatives and must have a nursing degree, an advanced practice nursing license or a medical degree. A second volunteer with a business or hospital administration background would mentor the hospital's administrative staff. Kelly said that for the third slot, the foundation would like to attract a mechanically adept person capable of overseeing facility maintenance.
The foundation provides free room and board and a small stipend. The three volunteers would share the four-bedroom, four-bathroom house now occupied by the Daughters. A Haitian cook prepares all meals.
"They wouldn't be isolated," Kelly said of the volunteers. Teams of physician volunteers arrive from the U.S. and Canada regularly to perform specialty surgery and advanced procedures and provide continuing medical education for the staff. The hospital has internet service and telephones. The nearby Cap Haitien airport has a daily flight to Florida. "They would be in the middle of a very well organized situation where they would be able to make an impact on people receiving services," he said.
A Haitian physician is executive and medical director of the hospital, and the director of nursing is Haitian. The facility has 21 Haitian physicians on staff.
Kelly said the Milot region is safe and well removed from the politically motivated violence in Port-au-Prince.
The CRUDEM Foundation is directed by the Knights and Dames of Malta of the American, Federal and Western Associations; and Kelly said that organization is the foundation's largest contributor. Many of the U.S. doctors who participate in the medical missions to the hospital are themselves knights.
Visit the foundation's website to learn more about Hôpital Sacré Coeur CRUDEM. For more information on the jobs, contact Kelly, or Denise Kelly, the executive director of the CRUDEM foundation, at (413) 642-0450. (The Kellys are not related.)