Spring, 2017 Update from the Chairman

Your Commitment is Sacred and the Heart of Hôpital Sacré Coeur.

That’s a bold statement; may we explain? Each of us has spent considerable time over many years — decades even — at Hôpital Sacré Coeur. We’ve seen for ourselves the incredible impact your donations have made. We know that your faithful support provides the critical life blood of this mission.

Last year, your donations made possible:
• 70,503 visits in the outpatient clinic — a yearly increase of more than 5,100 people.

• 2,204 newborn deliveries.

• 7,470 hospital admissions.

• 2,690 surgeries and 7,554 emergency room visits.

• 214,828 prescriptions were filled and 203,408 lab tests run — over 25% more in each category than in 2015.

• 20,278 people were tested for HIV — an almost 10% increase from 2015.

• Nearly every service offered — from diagnostic tests to antiretroviral clinic visits — showed a healthy annual increase.

The numbers — while impressive — more importantly, mark tens of thousands of individual stories of lives made healthier and more hope-filled thanks to the medical care and programs kept vibrant by your donation dollars. Those individual faces and stories behind the numbers are precious to us; they are the people we care about and care for day after day.

Last Year, Thanks to YOU:
• Scores of children — we hold dear — were spared from the assaults of tetanus, diphtheria, malnutrition, HIV, diabetes — and the list continues.

• Women — who often shoulder considerable family and community burdens — were treated for curable diseases and simple complications — like eclampsia, infection and hemorrhage — while birthing the miracle of life. Reasonable expectations in the US, but more often elusive
outcomes in Haiti.

• Men who faithfully care for their families received successful treatment for work related injuries. Had their accidents been left untreated and their employment jeopardized, their immediate and extended families would likely have faced starvation.

• The elderly, who are most grateful for the smallest kindness the hospital affords, received appropriate care and the basic dignity of a palliative respite at the end of their journeys.

Hourly Your Compassionate and Life-Affirming Impact is Witnessed
Recently, within one hour at our hospital, a family of eight was treated for poisoning after they were driven to eat toxic fruit because of their hunger. An eleven-year-old girl arrived on the back of a motor bike. She had tipped over a pot of boiling water and had second and third degree burns covering more than 30% of her body. A forty-year-old woman was admitted for later stage treatment of deadly cholera.

In the absence of Hôpital Sacré Coeur — and the care your donations provide — the family of eight would have likely died, the girl suffering horrific burns would have never stopped screaming from the unrelenting pain of her injuries and the woman suffering from cholera, without a simple IV, would have succumbed to the inevitable effects of dehydration and a full system shutdown.

Whether you ever step foot in Haiti or not, your financial support and prayers are tangible: your presence is felt daily and your contribution is gratefully and repeatedly acknowledged by patients, their families and their community.

You Affirming Life Over Death: That’s a Sacred Act
Donors, like you, link together in partnership with volunteers and hospital staff, and keep at bay the encroaching ravages of poverty, disease, hopelessness and death perched upon the edges of daily life.

Through your financial commitment, you establish a safe, life-affirming haven that provides a healthy pause and often a life changing reset to the downward spiral of despair and death.
Hôpital Sacré Coeur is an excellent example of what can be accomplished by good people of faith and unwavering commitment who believe that regardless of the opportunities life offers up, you can change the course of poverty’s mightiest river, with the strategic placement of money, relevant knowledge, appropriate technology, a collective will and the grace of God.

And, The CRUDEM Foundation, unlike most other charitable institutions, will send 100% of your gift to Haiti; no overhead, staff salaries, transportation or even postage will erode your money. This is an incredible blessing made possible through the generosity of Holy Name Medical Center, who feels it is an important, sacred commitment on their part to cover back office expenses, so that your dollars can do all of their intended work.

The CRUDEM Foundation is the steward of all these initiatives and your sacred commitments. On your behalf, it infuses the Haitian spirit with a fortified belief in possibilities, the optimism nurtured by achievement and the unvarnished truth that each man, woman and child within the hospital’s sphere of influence will have a better life because of its endeavors.

P.S. Please send your tax-deductible donation by March 31st. In one month, we will have treated over 6,000 patients, but only with your financial support. Thank you.