U.N. appoints Ecuadorian diplomat as envoy to Haiti

(Reuters) – The United Nations has named Ecuadorian diplomat Maria Isabel Salvador as the organization’s new Special Representative to Haiti and head of the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), the international body said in a statement on Wednesday.  (click link for entire story)

Growing Relationship with Haiti Nursing

Family Health Ministries has had a relationship with the first BSN Nursing School in Haiti since it opened its doors in Leogane in 2005. Over the years, FHM has provided scholarships, mentored nursing students in research projects, provided clinical sites for nursing education and hired both undergraduate and graduate nursing students to work at the Carmelle Voltaire Women’s Center in the Leogane Commune.

In January of 2023, Dr. David Walmer joined the board of directors for the Haiti Nursing Foundation, which supports to the Leogane nursing school. Recently, Dr. Dave started a local group of friends and colleagues within the FHM community to increase the awareness and support of nursing education and nurses in Haiti.

If you want to participate in this group and spend time with David in his retirement, please send an email to dkwalmer@familyhm.org and he will eagerly invite you to join this group.  

Here is a video of two of the FSIL nursing students singing about why they love their country.

Update on cervical cancer prevention

Partnership with Basic Health International & Haiti sans Cervical Cancer

HsCC consortium partners, FHM and BHI just completed enrolling 5000 Haitian women to test the feasibility of developing a unified health care screen and treat program to prevent cervical cancer in Haiti.  This strategy was approved by the Ministry of Health at the annual HsCC meeting in 2018.  This project began 5 years ago.  After enrolling the first ~2000 women, we discovered that Haiti does not have enough nitrous oxide gas to support a national cervical cancer program and we introduced thermoablation as an alternative treatment.  The program enrolled another 3000 women and demonstrated that the thermoablation was well received by both patients and providers.  We also developed and field-tested a cloud-based REDCap database that can be used by all programs as the network of programs grows.

Partnership with the Caris Foundation

FHM and the Caris Foundation developed a partnership to screen the HIV positive women that are receiving retroviral therapy through the PEPFAR program.  As expected women with HIV are more likely to have HPV infections and this has generated a plan to conduct another research program to identify strategies that will help us identify the subset of women with more advanced cervical dysplasia.  We hope that we can initiate this study in the Spring.