16944: Lemieux: Norwich Bulletin: article (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

Impoverished, breeding disease and death

By Francis McCabe.
Norwich Bulletin; fjmccabe@norwich.gannett. com

JEREMIE, Haiti -- The ward was full in the orphanage run by
the Missionaries of Charity, the Roman Catholic order of
sisters founded by Mother Teresa. Seventy children were
without homes.

The sisters take only the poorest of the poor, the sickest
of the sick. Many of the children's parents have died from
any number of diseases.

Their grandparents or uncles and aunts can't support them.

These children are sick. They are covered with scabies, a
skin disease where parasites work their way in from
fingertips and toes.

There are 20 to 25 children living in each of three large
rooms. Each has a crib or small bed. They receive three
meals a day and medical treatment.

But all they want is to be held.

Norwich lawyer Frank Manfredi hesitated. Three girls tugged
at his hands. They had red hair, in Haiti a sign of
malnutrition. But they also had wide smiles on their faces.


They wanted to be picked up and held.

Manfredi had been warned about how easily disease is spread
in Haiti, how even the most basic of human contact can hurt
you.

That's because children in Haiti are carriers of disease.

They live among rats and refuse. Most sleep in dirty beds
with a half-dozen other children. Malnutrition prevents
their bodies from fairly fighting off diseases that include
typhoid, scarlet and dengue fevers, malaria, diarrhea,
infection or skin disease.

Manfredi and nine others from the Norwich area were exposed
to the this reality after traveling to Haiti with Dr.
Jeremiah J. Lowney Jr., the Norwich orthodontist who
founded the Haitian Health Foundation to administer health
care to the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

So Manfredi weighed his options.

Then he picked up one of the orphans.

"I couldn't turn my back on them," he said. "They just
wanted someone to hold them and show them love."

Money is the only English word

The day starts early in Jeremie, a seaside city of 50,000.

At 4 a.m., cocks begin crowing incessantly. Dogs soon join
the chorus.

Lowney awoke, ready to greet the crowd that will be waiting
at the iron gate outside the Haitian Health Foundation. His
nine southeastern Connecticut volunteers joined him on his
daily 6 a.m. walk.

"The walks are partly for exercise," Lowney said, "and to
show (the visitors) how people live down here."

The group descended the steep hill from the Klinik Pep
Bondye-a into Jeremie's poverty and disease.

An entourage grew around him. More and more Haitians,
mostly boys, decided to walk with Lowney and his guests.

The younger ones tried to hold the hands of the Connecticut
visitors.

They slapped the back pockets of the men.

"Money" is the only English word many of them know. The
kids never stop asking for it.

They hoped someone will give them a few gourds or even a
dollar. A dollar will buy a roll of bread once a day, for
40 days.

Shanty town

The streets were alive with activity.

Taxi drivers gunned their dirt bikes for the day's work.
Mothers and children carried water in 8-gallon buckets on
top of their heads drawn from different wells throughout
the city. Tables were erected on the street where food and
other items are sold.

The cobblestone streets were lined with walls and some
well-to-do houses. Heat from the rising sun added to the
already humid air.

Halfway down the hill toward the ocean, Lowney stopped and
purposefully turned left into an alley no more than 2.5
feet wide.

Families -- six or seven people -- were living in huts no
more than 10 feet by 10 feet packed side by side.

One woman, named Carol, removed the tin board she used as a
door and invited the Americans in.

Carol lives in a dark, dank space with her young children.
The air smells of charcoal, urine and excrement.

Lowney explained how rats come into the room to eat. When
there is no food, the rats nip at the feet of anyone
sleeping on the floor.

A sheet covered in dirt separated the open room. Carol,
carrying one child, held the sheet open to reveal two more
children.

She told a translator she has no job and often doesn't know
where the next meal for her family is coming from.

Such shanties are a breeding ground for disease --
tuberculosis, hepatitis, any number of fevers, according to
Dr. Bette Gebrian, Haitian Health Foundation director of
public health.

Again, malnourished children's bodies are too weak to
resist, said Gebrian, who is the founder of Madonna House
in Norwich.

Back out in the alley, more children gathered around "Dr.
Jerry."

Jamie Roach-Decker, a dentist from Colchester and a mother
of three, ignored the smells and sights that would make
most people turn away. She picked up a child.

It's time for them to get back to the health clinic, Lowney
told his colleagues. A two-hour ride awaited the mixed
group of medical professionals and volunteers to another
rural village.

Lowney asked Roach-Decker to put the child down.

"Do I have to?" she asked.

Yes, she had to.



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