First 35 Beds Arrive in Haiti!

Just a few short weeks ago, our first shipment of 35 beds to Hôpital Sacré Coeur (HSC) cleared customs in Cap Haitien and was delivered to the hospital in Milot. In his letter thanking 100 Beds for Haiti for campaigning, fundraising, and delivering the beds, HSC CFO Raymond Delnatus told us that "this donation was one of the most important shipments that we have received during the earthquake."


Certainly our efforts were the efforts of a campaign that has spread far and wide, receiving logistical and monetary support from all over the world! Yet, it has been almost six months since the deadly earthquake, and according to U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki Moon Haiti still has not received enough aid on the ground.

Speaking to a BBC News radio program out of Jamaica, Moon described that immediate humanitarian assistance is only being received at 60 percent of the initial pledged donations. While the 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign is proud of the donation we have made so far, we will not stop until our pledge of 100 beds to HSC are shipped and delivered!

Happily, we are within reach of our pledge! We've had a second donation of 35 hospitals beds from Krankenhaus Bethanien hospital in Moers, Germany and have secured a great shipping contract! This means we only need to secure a donation of 30 additional beds and to raise the funds to ship them there to meet our goal. We will post more on our second offer of 35 beds tomorrow, along with shipping details and dates and our plans to raise the funds for the remaining beds.

Writing us this morning, Dr. Peter J. Kelly, President of The CRUDEM Foundation and HSC, expressed his gratitude for these donations as well:

The 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign has been inspiring and life-changing!! The CRUDEM Foundation/Hopital Sacre Coeur is honored to be the recipient of the work of such talented and dedicated people who care so passionately for the well-being of our Haitian sisters and brothers! The addition of quality hospital beds aids in patient healing and enhances their overall quality of care. You have helped us in meeting our goal to create a healthier Haiti, one dignified life at a time! God bless you all!

Very touched by the letter of gratitude from Raymond Delnatus, we've included it below for you to read as well:

Dear Judith Kaine,

I am Raymond Delnatus the CFO of Hospital Sacre-Coeur, I hear that you are the Director of the effort to send the beds down for our Hospital. Long time ago I kept looking for the donor of those beds because this donation was one of the most important shipments that we have received during the earthquake. On behalf of the Hospital Administration and the patients I thank you for this important donation that we have ever received, and I do not know without those beds how the 598 victims and patients that we have received could have been treated.

May God bless you all and you can continue to help the Crudem Foundation and the Hospital to take care of the Haitian people.

Attached are some photos to show you how we used the bed for the patients at the Hospital.

Thanks again for all you are doing for our Hospital.

Ray Delnatus

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Awards Haitian NGO

At their annual conference on global health, The Global Health Council presented the prestigious Gates Award for Global Health to GHESKIO - Groupe Haïtien d’Étude du Sarcome de Kaposi et des Infectieuses Opportunistes, for its nearly three decades of work fighting AIDS and for its Herculean job in helping people survive after the devastating earthquake in January.

President Clinton, who visited GHESKIO while in Haiti earlier this year, described, "Despite the fact that its own headquarters were damaged, GHESKIO almost immediately began housing the homeless, treating the sick and injured, and returning HIV positive patients to their lifesaving medications. For these people, GHESKIO’s services and dedication meant the difference between life and death, health and infirmity, and hope and despair."



In it's 10th year, The Gates Award for Global Health was established by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to reward and exemplify organizations which have developed processes for improving health, especially in resource poor settings, with measurable results.

To learn more about the Global Health Council, the Gates Foundation Award or the annual conference on global health, please visit http://www.globalhealth.org/

Basics for Haiti at the Root of Humanity

The New York Times Editorial Board wrote an excellent piece on what basics Haiti needs to re-build from the earthquake, and turn itself around into a more stable nation. At the top of any "basic human rights" check list comes transparancy, equality, and equal protection under the law. Keeping women and children safe, and planning for more free and fair (and uncorrupted) elections will help to empower the Haiti people and allow for re-building to happen from the ground up with Haitians leading the charge. It is our responsibility as more prosperous and more powerful nation neighbors and throughout the global community to provide the tools either via infrastructure support, education, training, and material donations to help take away Haiti's crutches and allow it to stand as a nation on its own. Strong and solid healthcare infrastruce will alleviate many of the physical and mental barriers that will also help empower Haitians who are still recovering from January's devestating earthquake.

Donations Needed to Ship Another 35 Beds to HSC

According to Handicap International there were an estimated 800,000 disable people in Haiti before the earthquake and estimated 2,000 to 6,000 people were left with some kind of disability by the earthquake. In response to the growing number of disabled people, HSC built a new prosthetic lab, which is now up and functioning. As of June 6, HSC staff and doctors were able to fit its first 6 patients. Another 80 patients with amputations are waiting to be fit, and volunteer prosthetists continue to actively train the Haitian staff in their skill.

The 100 Beds for Haiti's first shipment of 35 beds from Germany have made their way to Miami, Florida, and will be headed to Haiti this week! And it also means that we've reached a little more than 1/3rd of our goal of sending 100 beds to Haiti. In this same light, we were recently informed that there are an additional 35 beds in Germany, which have been donated from a few hospitals. In order to get these beds from a warehouse in Germany to Milot, Haiti, we need more donations to cover the shipping costs. If you haven't had an opportunity to donate, please visit our website www.100bedsforhaiti.com to send us your donation today!

Dr. Peter Kelly, President of Crudem/ Hopital Sacre Coeur recently shared with us this story while working at HSC last month:

At the last nightly meeting before I left I was told of a volunteer who recruited other volunteers and patients to go to the ICU and fix the hair and clean a young woman with a cervical spine injury who is paralyzed from the neck down. This poor woman has been in our ICU waiting for spinal surgery to stabilize her spine so she can be moved to a rehabilitation facility. It took 5 volunteers to stabilize her while a fellow patient cleaned and braided her hair. Other volunteers cleaned her legs and feet and massaged them with lotion. When they were finished they were rewarded with a beautiful smile from the patient that lit up the whole room. It was her first smile since arriving!!

HSC continues to receive critical patients, and again, the need for beds--not cots or make-shift beds-- is overwhelming for overall patient recovery. Whether to make new amputee patients more comfortable in their recovery, or support patients in both pre-operation and post-operation, real and stable beds will is an important link towards overall physical and psychological recovery.

Report from the Ground: CBS News Reports on HSC

The CBS affiliate in Washington DC ran a story on two volunteer doctors, Dr. Jamie Freishtat and her husband, Dr. Rob Freishtat of Potomac, Maryland where they continued to provide emergency medical relief to earthquake victims and rehabilitation support to many amputee patients four months after the earthquake at HSC.

2010 Might Be the Worst Hurricane Season Yet

The Gulf received some extra bad news this week with predictions that the region will likely see 8 to 14 major hurricanes this year. Such a serious hurricane season poses a great threat to efforts in Haiti to rebuild after the January earthquake. Experts are concerned that a hurricane could create a secondary disaster and are urging Haitian and world leaders to take steps now to reduce risks and invest in disaster preparedness. By taking steps now to prepare for what is sure to be an above average hurricane season, experts believe Haiti can help keep this hurricane season from ending as tragically as the 2008 season. Haiti never fully recovered from the 2008 hurricane season which claimed over 800 lives. Years of deforestation, poor building codes, and the destruction caused by the January earthquake have left Haiti particularly vulnerable to hurricanes. Trees help stabilize soil and absorb rain water which is why Trees for the Future has been working to reforest much of Haiti since 2002.

As Haiti braces for what could be a record breaking hurricane season, Hôpital Sacré Coeur needs your help now more than ever. Please donate if you can!

The New York Daily News: Hurricane Season

The Tribute

World Bank Cancels Haiti's Debt

Haiti no longer has to repay $36 million so it can concentrate fully on their recovery efforts. This debt cancellation was made possible by contributions from Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

CNN World Bank Cancels Haiti Debt

35 Beds Headed to Haiti!

While it has been about a month since our last post on this blog, there has been a lot of work going on behind the scenes. Through the generosity of our supporters around the world, 35 hospital beds are headed to Haiti!

Our first shipment of 35 beds will begin its voyage from Germany to Florida this Saturday, May 8, and from there, the beds will make the much shorter journey to Haiti and Hôpital Sacré Coeur. Representing the vision of this campaign, this exciting event was made possible by the collaborative generosity of individuals and organizations, working together from near and far: the donation of 23 beds from the Krankenhaus Bethanien hospital in Moers, Germany and 12 beds from the Klinikum Lüneburg hospital near Hamburg, Germany; the coordination of transportation and packing of the beds by DPD, a world leader in international parcel delivery services; the freight shipping and delivery to Florida by Hellmann Worldwide Logistics; and the tireless commitments and coordination efforts by Marc Maleika in New York, and Philipp Anhalt and Tim Ulrich in Germany, all demonstrate great dedication to helping improve health outcomes in Haiti and have been essential to making this happen.

Krankenhaus Bethanien Hospital in Moers, Germany

We spoke with Philipp Anhalt who gave us a little insight on how he initially got involved in the campaign and how he was able to mobilize his own network of clients and colleagues to send the beds to Haiti.

"About two months ago I received an e-mail from one of my dearest friends announcing the launch of the 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign. Cool idea, I immediately thought, and forwarded it to my friends urging them for support. At the office, I told my colleague Tim who was also immediately excited about the idea. Since our company ITA Consulting located in Hamburg, Germany specializes in the logistics industry, we considered ourselves to be in an ideal position to support charity campaigns and therefore had already spent numerous hours discussing potential approaches to get involved. However, our initial enthusiasm had maliciously been eroded by daily routine and thus our ideas never came even remotely close to life.

So we jumped at the opportunity that the 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign presented us and decided to make a contribution. Thinking about the goal of the campaign to raise 100 hospital beds, we came up with the idea to contact German hospitals and ask whether they would be willing to donate discarded, though functional, beds. From there on the operation was up and running. In no time we managed to acquire 35 beds from various hospitals across Germany, the majority of which were destined for scrapping, and consequently had to be moved quickly. DPD, one of the leading parcel companies in Europe, swiftly agreed to provide straightforward support. They collected the beds and stored them at their Hamburg depot until further notice. We then aimed to find a forwarding company who would ship the beds to Florida. This turned out to be a far more cumbersome task then we expected. Even for such a supposedly simple product like used hospital beds, tons of rules and regulations had to be considered. We finally managed to arrange for the transport via Hellmann Logistics who offered to ship the beds at cost [to Miami, Florida].

DPD loading the donated hospital beds for storage before transportation

Now that the container is on its way, we would like to use the opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to all helping hands. We are particularly grateful for the support of DPD in the Duisburg and Hamburg depots. Also, big thanks to our management for encouraging us to take part in the campaign without further ado and for their active participation!

We thoroughly enjoyed working on this and look forward to the tasks to come..."

The 100 Beds for Haiti Campaign would like to express its sincere gratitude to all the partners involved and to all those who have generously donated to the campaign thus far. Your donations are essential to financing the transportation of these beds and getting them on their way to Milot where they are very much needed!

"We all can't give a lot, but all of us can give a little..."-vKa$h

It doesn't take much to make a difference and when 100 Beds for Haiti decided to partner with Soul Clap to raise money during YoYoYo 90s Jam: Heal the World edition, we set out to accomplish two things: raise money and spread awareness. Like many places that have suffered enormous and crippling natural disasters, it is our collective response as individuals, citizens and communities to rebuild Haiti and make it a stronger and healthier Haiti. Thanks again to everyone who came out to support the campaign on March 23 at the Middlesex Lounge in Boston. If you missed this event, don't worry, we have more coming down the pipeline! Watch the video below to get a glimpse of who are supporters and we can't wait to see you at the next event!

YOYOYO 90's Jam: Heal The World Edition w/100 Beds For Haiti from 100BedsForHaiti on Vimeo.

Dance Therapy

If only recovery could be as easy as a Lady Gaga song: "just dance, gonna be okay!" As a form of physical therapy, patients came outside and the universal language of song and dance brought the best out of the Hatian earthquake victims and the volunteers. For many patients this was the first time venturing out of the hospital setting to let lose and dance off some of the stress from an earthquake that left many learning to live and walk in new circumstances.