TIMO, HAITI: Improving Health
A simple sentence, uttered by several Timo villagers, pierced the hearts of team members from Haiti Health Initiative (HHI) as they packed up and returned home. Timo is located in a rural, mountainous area of Haiti without roads or utilities. It is here that HHI chose to support the building of Timo’s Multi-purpose Community Center, accomplished through generous donations and hard work from both Americans and Haitians. A major purpose for the center is to house a medical and dental clinic. A mission team from HHI consisting of physicians, nurses, a pharmacist, an ophthalmologist, and several other health and humanitarian workers, was thefirst medical team to use this new clinic space.
During their short 4½ days in Timo, 759 patients were seen for regular checkups and specific ailments ranging from malnutrition, to heart murmurs. They even were privileged to witness the birth of a set of twins. In addition, physicians, accompanied by a community health worker, hiked into the countryside conducting home visits for those too ill to make the trek to the Community Center.
Education stations were available to teach preventative measures for common illnesses: cholera prevention, dental hygiene, prenatal care, breastfeeding, anemia, the importance of wearing shoes, and general sanitation measures. These learning experiences are an important part of HHI’s mission to promote health principles among the population so that one day the village’s continued health will be self-sustainable. Children received needed help to fight anemia, intestinal worms, and eyesight and general growth challenges. Hemoglobin levels were checked for pregnant and breastfeeding women and for children. Next they were sent to the ophthalmologist, and finally to a primary care physician. Any patients who had potentially serious diagnoses were referred to nearby hospitals for necessary follow-up.
Within this small amount of time the team was able to distribute 63 newborn kits, 25 birthing kits, 187 hygiene kits, and 300 washable sani-pad kits to girls between 10-20 years old. Malnourished individuals received nutritional counseling from dietitians, who also taught nutrition classes at the village elementary school.
Through generous donations, personal sacrifice, and plenty of love, Haiti Health Initiative continues working in Timo. This collaboration between HHI and Timo villagers will both lengthen and improve the quality of life, eventually allowing Haitians to sustain themselves. Hearts were opened, friendships forged. They will not be forgotten.
Globus Relief
Globus Relief was founded in 1996. While working in the salvage retail industry, two Salt Lake City businessmen were saddened to see viable medical and hygiene supplies frequently sent to landfills. Certain that these surplus resources could be rescued and put to good use, they created Globus Relief to efficiently channel overstocked, gently used, or short-dated supplies to humanitarian projects in Utah and around the world.
Since our founding, Globus Relief has distributed over $1 billion (fair market value) of supplies to more than 800 charities at work in over 140 countries. Twenty full-time employees oversee the work of gathering, processing, and distributing humanitarian supplies in our 100,000-s.f. warehouse in Salt Lake City, Utah. Volunteers contribute an average of 225 labor hours per week, the equivalent of 5.6 additional full-time employees.
Globus Relief is known for strong financial efficiency, historically keeping administrative and fundraising expenses to under 3% of our total budget.
