American Friendship Foundation

Meet Dr. Bordes, an OB/GYN who manages a medical clinic for the community of Canaan, Haiti. Dr. Bordes started his work here following the 2010 earthquake when hundreds of thousands of people were sent to this “temporary” camp outside of Port-au-Prince. Six years later, Canaan has developed into it’s own city and is having it’s medical needs met thanks to the service of Dr. Bordes.

In this interview, AFF volunteer Hubermann Alcean had a chance to ask Dr. Bordes about his vision for the clinic and the medical needs that are going unmet within the city of Canaan.

Dr. Bordes shares his growth plans for the Canaan medical clinic including:

• Building more advanced maternity services including a delivery room, pre-op and post-op space, and postpartum care.
• Offering counseling services by a professional psychologist for victims of sexual assault.
• Expanded emergency care services. Many of the residents of Canaan can’t get transportation to other hospitals or are turned away because they can’t afford the care.
• Round-the-clock care for Canaan to save more lives!.

To all of the American doctors and nurses who have traveled with us to Haiti, you know Dr. Bordes and the extraordinary work he pours into the city of Canaan. We are proud to be partnering with him to support his vision for better medical services in this burgeoning community.

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Raw Video Transcript in English

(Thank you, Hubermann Alcean)

The picture I have for this community.

So, we need a clinic or hospital that can see different types of people.

So now we have general consultation for patients who have colds and fevers. And right now we do c-sections we do deliveries now.

And now we need a space that can provide different services based on the type of patients and people that we are seeing.

For example, we would like to have maternity service.

Including patients who have preeclampsia.

Delivery room.

A room for postpartum or pre-op.

Post-op for after surgery or after operation.

And he would like to have a space also to see children.

And he would like to see infants, like little babies.

And let’s say if someone comes and has a c-section, after that if there is an issue with the baby we need to be able to ask about the baby and have a place for the baby to stay for the night for follow up.

And that’s for maternity.

Now we see all cases pretty much.

And we would like to offer a service based on the people’s culture and people’s familiarity of cultural differences if you want to call it that way.

And because we have a psychologist on board we started seeing a lot of patients that came here for sexual assault because it’s a big community and it’s a lot of people who live here and so many different types of people and we would like to have service where if someone was to be sexually assaulted and they need assistance and after being seen medically they have a psychologist that can come and counsel them and give them advice on how to move forward.

And even though we have a public hospital just right around the corner doesn’t necessarily mean that this hospital can provide all care for everybody. And if there is a lack of equipment and services, let’s say someone comes in from a car accident and they’re not allowed to take care of them because a lack of resources and sometimes that person might die trying to get somewhere else to get better care.

And that’s why I want to say we need an emergency service just to be able to see someone right away who has been in a car accident or something big happened and save some lives.

And we can say that those type of services are very important for this community and the fact that most people who live in this community don’t have enough money to afford anything else that would be awesome to have that kind of possibility for them.

And just think of someone gets in a car accident at 1 o’clock in the morning.

And let’s say someone is sexually assaulted during the night.

And let’s say to be honest just during the day like if someone were to go somewhere else to get care you have to have a private car some kind of transportation to get out of there. And that’s why most people come here is because they can’t afford the transportation to get somewhere else. They have to come here and with what little I have, I have to be able to do something.

And as Jeff can say, one time when he came in there was a patient that had a really bad emergency and he had to take him somewhere else to get care.

And we think if we can build a hospital that can provide those type of services and we can assure you that we can save some lives and a lot people won’t die because they can’t get that kind of care.