Revitalizing Graduate Medical Education in Global Settings: Lessons From Post-Earthquake Haiti.

Following the massive 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated much of the Haitian capital city of Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010, the Haitian health system and its medical education programs were fragmented, fragile, and facing a significant, overwhelming demand for clinical care. In response, the authors of this paper and the institutions they represent supported the development of a teaching hospital that could fill the void in academic training capacity while prioritizing the health of Haiti's rural poor-goals aligned with the Haitian Ministry of Health (MOH) strategy.

Food insecurity as a risk factor for preterm birth: a prospective facility-based cohort study in rural Haiti.

Introduction: Haiti has an estimated neonatal mortality rate of 32/1000 live births, the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Preterm birth and being born small for gestational age (SGA) are major causes of adverse neonatal outcomes worldwide. To reduce preterm birth and infants born SGA, it is important to understand which women are most at risk and how risk varies within countries.

The impact of natural disaster on pediatric surgical delivery: a review of Haiti six months before and after the 2010 earthquake.

Unlabelled: Little is known about pediatric surgical disease in resource-poor countries. This study documents the surgical care of children in central Haiti and demonstrates the influence of the 2010 earthquake on pediatric surgical delivery.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective review of operations performed at Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante hospitals in central Haiti.

Evolution of operative interventions by two university-based surgical teams in Haiti during the first month following the earthquake.

Background: The earthquake that struck Haiti on 10 January 2010, killed 200,000 persons and injured thousands more. Working with Partners in Health, a non-governmental organization already present in Haiti, Dartmouth College, and the University of Pennsylvania sent multidisciplinary surgical teams to hospitals in the villages of Hinche and Cange. The purpose of this report is to describe the injuries seen and evolution of treatments rendered at these two outlying regional hospitals during the first month following the earthquake.

Structural violence: a barrier to achieving the millennium development goals for women.

In 2000, all 191 United Nations member states agreed to work toward the achievement of a set of health and development goals by 2015. The achievement of these eight goals, the Millennium Development goals (MDGs) is highly dependent on improving the status of women, who play a key role in health and education in families and communities around the world. Yet structural violence, defined as the systematic exclusion of a group from the resources needed to develop their full human potential, remains a significant barrier against women's development and threatens the achievement of the MDGs.

Emergency surgical care delivery in post-earthquake Haiti: Partners in Health and Zanmi Lasante experience.

Background: The earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010 caused significant devastation to both the country and the existing healthcare infrastructure in both urban and rural areas. Most hospital and health care facilities in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas were significantly damaged or destroyed. Consequently, large groups of Haitians fled Port-au-Prince for rural areas to seek emergency medical and surgical care.

Overseas processing of dried blood spots for timely diagnosis of HIV in Haitian infants.

Objective: To determine the feasibility of sending dried blood spots (DBS) to an overseas processing center for the diagnosis of HIV infection in infants in rural Haiti.

Methods: The program took place in the Central Department of Haiti. Children under 18 months of age who were born to an HIV-infected mother or who had a positive HIV antibody test had blood collected on filter paper.

Increasing access to surgical services for the poor in rural Haiti: surgery as a public good for public health.

Although surgical care has not been seen as a priority in the international public health community, surgical disease constitutes a significant portion of the global burden of disease and must urgently be addressed. The experience of the nongovernmental organizations Partners In Health (PIH) and Zanmi Lasante (ZL) in Haiti demonstrates the potential for success of a surgical program in a rural, resource-poor area when services are provided through the public sector, integrated with primary health care services, and provided free of charge to patients who cannot pay. Providing surgical care in resource-constrained settings is an issue of global health equity and must be featured in national and international discussions on the improvement of global health.