15472: Durban on Doctors & Hospital Care in Port-au-Prince (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Lance Durban <lpdurban@yahoo.com>

In the Good News from Haiti department, I would like to draw the
Corbett group's attention to excellent medical care offered at
the Canape Vert Hospital in Port-au-Prince.  This past week, I
was admitted for an operation to treat a hernia as well as a
precautionary colonoscopy.  I am now thankfully back in one
piece and recovering at home, but it struck me that anyone
facing routine surgery in the States without the benefit of
medical insurance might do well to have it done in Haiti.

Counting a pre-operative X-ray and EKG (to make sure that I was
healthy enough for the operation), I saw 5 different doctors,
each one of them excellent in his or her specialty.  Hopital
Canape Vert has seen considerable improvement in recent years
and now has a very competent nursing staff, a resident
physician, and 24 hour emergency room and laboratory.  The place
is clean, the food edible, and the most expense suite is still
less than US$ 100 per night.  Mine was not the deluxe model, but
still had a color TV with remote, refrigerator, motor-adjustable
bed, separate bath with shower and walk-in closet, and came to
US$ 76 per night for my two night stay.  By foregoing the suite,
I could have had an air-conditioned single room for about US
$46... about what you would pay for a night at a Motel 6 in the
States!

By U.S. standards, Canape Vert is small, and not equipped for
all operations.  (Save your open heart surgery for a
better-equipped U.S. facility).  Still, people in Haiti with the
wherewithal to pay really cannot complain about lack of good
doctors or medical facilities.  The problem, of course, is that
for the vast majority of Haitians, even relatively low cost
medical care is more than they can afford.

In years past, I can recall watching newborn babies being
attended behind a huge plate glass window in the pouponnerie
(nursery) at Canape Vert.  Babies are still being born every day
in Port-au-Prince, yet to my surprise last week, there was not a
single baby in the Canape Vert nursery.  One can only surmise
that Haiti's difficult economy may have put Canape Vert out of
reach of most Haitians.  Now that's tragic indeed.

Lance Durban