30475: (news) Chamberlain: Patients walk for hours to reach free Haiti clinic (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

By Isabelle Ligner


CARREFOUR-CHARLES, May 22 (AFP) - Every day the queues form early outside a
remote Haiti dispensary where crowds of sick people jostle for a precious
ticket granting them virtually free treatment and medicine.

Many have trekked by foot for hours to reach the dispensary in the far
southwest village of Carrefour-Charles, which was set up in August by
Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World), but has quickly become swamped by
patients.

"I walked for three hours to get here, because I knew I would be well cared
for and wouldn't be charged very much," said 76-year-old farmer, Vincent
Accius, who was suffering from a high fever, and still clearly exhausted by
his ordeal.

Each patient is only charged some 25 gourdes (50 cents) for treatment and
medicine, while pregnant women and children under five go free.

But the scheme, aimed at helping some of the impoverished Caribbean
nation's poorest and most isolated people get access to badly-needed health
care, is now groaning under the weight of its patients, with the numbers
having quadrupled since last year.

"We are completely overwhelmed. We can't take more than 40 people a day.
Sometimes we have to send as many as 80 away, and we give them tickets for
the next day," said senior nurse Marie-Jeanne Felix.

"It breaks our hearts."

A sea of hands stretches out in desperation every morning as the nurses
hand out consultation tickets to the waiting queue: last ticket, last hope
of being seen that day.

The journey from the tiny town of Jeremie, 30-kilometre (18-mile) further
west along the peninsula, to the clinic had taken Ginette Voltaire, 31,
seven hours.

She and her sick 11-year-old son, had driven part of the way along bumpy
dirt tracks before the road ran out and the pair had to pick their way by
foot across open countryside.

"There is a dispensary closer to my house, but I would have had to pay and
I don't have any money," Voltaire said.

"This is going to quickly become a problem" said Jean-Khit Dely, the
regional coordinator for Medecins du Monde.

The United Nations estimates that 80 percent of the Haitian population
lives below the poverty line on less than two dollars a day.

"At Carrefour-Charles we don't have enough human resources and we simply
don't have enough space to do more than 40 consultations a day," Dely
added.

"Free treatment should be spread to other dispensaries to spread access to
services more fairly and more equally."

Most of the country's health services are concentrated in the capital,
Port-au-Prince, and some 80 percent of the population will first turn to
traditional doctors for treatment before committing themselves to a journey
to a hospital.

But the long waits at Carrefour-Charles are beginning to discourage some.

"I've been here three days and I still haven't managed to get a ticket,"
said Darline Boussicot, whose two-month-old baby Kerwill, was suffering
from malnutrition.

"I won't come back again," she said, before being stopped by doctor Dely
who promises she will be seen that day.

But as he does so, she sighed asking: "How long can we go on like this?"