Steevenson Petit-Frere - 7-Years-Old - Cancer

 

We lost the fight against cancer for a young boy. Steevenson Petit-Frere, 7-year-old died yesterday at Bernard Mevs Hospital. There is a children's mission hospital here in Port-au-Prince that has a small cancer program. In May we had sent Steevenson and his mother to the children's hospital. The mother told the doctor that a mission sent her. This children's hospital has good care but they don't work well with outside missions. The doctor contacted us and told us that Steevenson would need a cat scan and a biopsy done. They said they couldn't do it for free and I asked them to send a proforma of the fees to us. They wrote the proforma and said it would be $900US for the cat scan and 2,000 US$ for the biopsy surgery. Those are ridiculous rates. A cat scan with contrast at Bernard Mevs Hospital is $200US. We couldn't pay for the fees, and went to Bernard Mevs Hospital seeking help.

Bernard Mevs/Project Medishare Hospital is a private hospital. Project Medishare brings in medical teams from the United States and Canada to work at Bernard Mevs Hospital. Dr. Henry Ford, is a Haitian-American pediatric surgeon and when his team was here a couple weeks ago they did the biopsy procedure for free and Bernard Mevs Hospital did not charge any fees. They returned to the United States with the sample and sent it for analysis. The results were going to be given on Friday but on Monday Steevenson's mother brought him to the house and he was in bad shape. The doctors at Bernard Mevs Hospital admitted Steevenson to the pediatrics room where he died during the evening. We are grateful for the care Bernard Mevs hospital staff provided.

We know that Steevenson is with the Lord and suffers no more but what I don't understand is why missions can't work together to help each other out. I don't really know if the American director of that children's hospital knows what is going on with his administration staff but it is sad. Now I know not to show my white face and make sure to tell the mothers of the children we send to the childrens hospital to never let it be known that a foreigner brought them to their mission hospital. Pray that missions in Haiti could work together in respect and in a network. Pray for Steevenson's mother as she mourns the loss of her son. The following photos are of Steevenson and his mother after his biopsy procedure 2 weeks ago.

Unwanted Child

A few weeks ago there was a medical team from Lakeland, Florida who came to Coram Deo for a couple of medical clinics. One of the patients who were seen was a sick little boy who had bit his lip during a seizure due to a high fever. He was very weak and we brought him to Bernard Mevs Hospital. He was admitted to the pediatrics unit and received good care from the Haitian and foreign medical staff. He had a bad case of pneumonia and brain damage caused by the seizures and high fever. By the grace of God and good medical care, ten days later this young boy recovered from his bout of pneumonia. We paid for his hospital bill and asked the mother where she would like us to bring them. She told us that she lived in the Rte. Frere area of Port-au-Prince, but that she needed to go see someone in the Delmas 65 area. We drove her as far as the ravine would let us and she said that she would walk the rest of the way to the place she was going. We felt good that this boy was going home with his mother.

We found out today that after we dropped the mother off she backtracked and took a tap-tap back to Bernard Mevs Hospital. She told the security guard that our vehicle had broken down and asked if she could wait inside the gates until we had fixed our truck. The security guards know us and let her in with her son. She went to the clinic area and left her son on the bench and walked out of the gates never to return to the hospital again. Now the hospital has an abandoned child to look after until a placement is found. It is sad that the mother used our name to get in the hospital gates to abandoned her child. We are going to tell Bernard Mevs Hospital staff to refuse access to anyone who says they are coming from Coram Deo, Karen unless accompanied by Amos or myself. I don't know how a mother can do what this mother did. If her child would have been left untreated he would have died. Pray that a placement is found for this child.

School Shelter Project - Part 3

The metal work and the framing went together well.

We ended up making this last school shelter wider than the others, making use of the empty space along the front wall.

It was fun watching the building and the clinics going on at the same time!

It sure does help having skilled tradesman leading the building teams :)

Jeff and Nathan rapidly laid the 2x4's in place.

Here are a few of Ysmailles' workers cutting and measuring the steel that is used for the shelter wall frames.