Bringing a message of hope

Federico Piana

The entire area of Croix-des-Bouquets, 10 kilometres north-east of Port-au-Prince — a short distance from Haiti’s capital — is controlled by armed gangs. It is completely sealed off: no one goes in or out except for the paramilitaries who go off to fight and return — if they return — often wounded and mutilated. The Government police often try to force the checkpoints where clashes turn into carnage with dozens and dozens of deaths.

Even though only a few kilometres separate Croix-des-Bouquets from the only two hospitals left standing in Port-au-Prince, transporting someone who has been shot or torn apart by a hand grenade would be too dangerous. Perhaps impossible. That is why the leaders of the militias that have been at war with each other and with government forces, blood-staining the Caribbean country for years, have decided that all the wounded should be transported to the Foyer Saint Camille Hospital, which was founded in Croix-des-Bouquets by several Camillian missionaries back in 1994.

The leaders of the armed gangs, if they could have, would have torn down this hospital too, but they realised that it would be better to use it not only to get their militiamen back on the war fronts, but also to treat their wives, children and relatives. “And then”, explains Father Erwan Jean-Marie François, “they also understood that we are useful to the poor and starving population and that we treat everyone in the same way, without asking anything about them or who they belong to. That is why, so far, we have not been touched, even though several other works of the Church have been burnt down in the neighbourhood”.

Father Erwan, a missionary of the Camillian Ministers of the Infirm, explains that the doctors and nurses at the hospital he runs take care of at least 100 people every day, many of whom are those injured in the daily clashes between rebels and police. “Among them are also children, because the war spares no one”.

It is precisely the children who are at the heart of the mission desired and run by the Camillians. In the Foyer Saint Camille Hospital complex, right from the start, the founders chose to create the Foyer-Bethléem, which houses numerous mentally and physically disabled minors. “There are at least a hundred of them, housed in two wards. And they are almost all children abandoned by families who consider disability a shame, a divine curse, a stigma to be erased”.

Father Erwan Jean-Marie François recalls with sorrow when a father and mother left their child in a corner of the courtyard and then ran away. “They did it because they were sure that we would take care of him here. But many of the children in our care we found abandoned on the streets. And we do not know where their relatives are”.

Next to these young disabled people, who need every kind of assistance because in many cases they cannot even move, are the Camillian sisters, together with other workers and volunteers: more or less 15 people. “They do almost everything. They feed them, give them medicine, keep them company”. The seminarians who attend the facility also visit them, giving them care and psychological and spiritual support.

How the Foyer Saint Camille Hospital has managed to remain operational while still guaranteeing extensive and quality services such as that dedicated to children with disabilities is a question that the World Health Organisation and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) are also asking. To which the Camillian has only one answer: “They tell us: how can we survive while in other areas hospitals and care facilities are burning down? The explanation lies in the fact that we care about saving the poor, money is not our priority. We care about health and people’s lives. If they see you doing good, they will not touch you”.

For example, we feed those children who arrive at the doors of the hospital driven by hunger: “They are malnourished and we feed them protein almost every day and also food they can take home with them, so that this nutritional care can be as continuous as possible. And then we also distribute food to 500 families”. Economically, who subsidises all this? “Our Italian confrères in Turin, without whose help we could do nothing.