Welcome
Team Canada Healing Hands Inc is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the provision of rehabilitative education, training, and care in areas of need.
L’Equipe Canadienne – Healing Hands Inc. est une organisation à but non-lucratif dédiée à subvenir à l’éducation et l’entraînement en réadaptation ainsi qu’à administrer des soins dans les endroits qui en ont le plus besoin.
TCHH Activity Update
Highlights from 2011
1. Four teams of rehabilitation professionals from Canada travelled to Haiti, providing education and training sessions along with mentoring, in collaboration with 5 Haiti-based non-profit health facilities. In addition to survivors of earthquake, patients with stroke, cerebral palsy, and developmental disorders were also seen. While each volunteer individually fundraises to cover their costs, each group was provided with additional funds to facilitate in-country travel, provision of durable medical equipment and training materials.
2. A Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) 2-day workshop was conducted for rehabilitation professionals, with 75 attendees from 11 different organizations in the country. A French speaking team from Canada (Quebec and New Brunswick) complimented Haitian physicians and nurses, and the course covered a wide range of topics, from wound care to sexuality. We have been asked to do further workshops and training, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The conference also enabled collaboration among centres, and included a meeting of a Working Group for SCI in Haiti. This formalization of the working group with a communications system (which Team Canada hosts) has facilitated advocacy, care and referrals in the country.
3. We have taken an intensive approach to developing capacity in speech and language services, which affect many children in the country, and for which the country has extreme limitation in resources. We have built audiology suites in two hospitals, and with support from a CMF grant, have funded 2 expatriate SLPs to work directly with ENT surgeons in Haiti to develop the program, and to train local audiology and SLP technicians. We are working towards developing a credentialed SLP technician training program, in collaboration with schools in Canada.
4. We supported the travel of two Haiti-based rehabilitation staff to participate in the International Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine international meeting, including the working group with the WHO on disaster response. We presented posters and platforms at this meeting. These members are working on training manuals for SCI in low-resource settings, and we will support the dissemination of this resource, as well as provide technical/clinical guidance.
5. We contributed to the funding of a professional grant writer, to generate a proposal to USAID for 5 organizations collaborating together in Haiti in developing sustainable rehabilitation services in the country. The result of this competition is pending. TCHH is acting as a support organization for the lead, Healing Hands for Haiti (HHH) International.
With our ongoing work, we recognize the challenges in Haiti are great, and that achieving sustainable delivery of health care is not easy, or quick. Unfortunately, as expected, once media coverage and urgency following the earthquake subsided, many organizations have left Haiti. We, as an organization, are committed to continuing in the long term to support our partners in this country, and understand and believe that education and training remain vital as the first steps in reaching such goals. We began work in 2002 in Haiti, and have seen significant improvements over time; there is greater interest in the country from both the government and the people, in the well being and rights of persons with disability, and hence a will to develop rehabilitation services for its citizens.
"My latest trip to Haiti occurred one year after the earthquake. On the morning of January 12th, we were honoured to be taken to one of the tent cities to observe a memorial service, surrounded by thousands of the people who were most severely affected by the quake. In typical, resilient, Haitian fashion, the children sang, marched solemnly to an open field carrying banners they had made, held a minute of silence, and then played soccer. Life goes on, even if it will never be the same." - TCHH Volunteer
Our plans for 2012 include continued collaborative work in Haiti and new collaboration in Belize:
Haiti
1. Continuing Education for Haitian Physicians and Allied Health
a. Attendance at the Canadian Medical Associations Conference on Physician Leadership, April 2012 by one Haitian physician (Physiatrist)
b. On-site educational workshops for rehabilitation care providers at sites in Port au Prince, Jacmel, Les Cayes, Ile-à-Vache, and Cap Haitian (Central, South, North). These will include skills training in leadership and as educators, in addition to clinical learning. These will occur year round, with a goal of 6-10 sessions in 2012.
c. Support for presenting platform or poster at an international meeting by a Haitian rehabilitation health professional, on the work in Haiti.
d. Repeat SCI workshop in 2012 – there is much demand, and our experience has been that this can be conducted very cost-effectively while keeping accessible for workers throughout the country. Since the earthquake, patients with SCI are surviving their injuries due to the new skills and awareness in the country; the database is nearing 200 patients, and there is great need for advancing the skills and training of the health care teams caring for these patients long term.
2. Bursary and Support for Clinical and Educational Programs at Healing Hands
a. Supplement the support for Haitian rehabilitation physicians to allow them to work with medical and nursing students, and participate in their education and training.
b. Bursary support for Haitian medical students and residents to participate in training in rehabilitation medicine with the Healing Hands programs.
With donations/grants, we would like to provide financial support for the salaries of a Haitian physical medicine and rehabilitation physician so that he can work full time, and for interns to participate in rehabilitation training under this physicians’ leadership. The country currently has only 4 rehabilitation physicians, and it is estimated that close to 10% of the population of 10 million have a disability. We would like to contribute to the development of future rehabilitation physicians, and feel this initial support will have longer term implications.
3. Continuing education and training to help develop the Speech and Language services as well as Audiology
services in Haiti, including the development of a credentialed Speech and Language/Audiology technician
training program in collaboration with Canadian schools.
Belize
A group of two volunteers will be heading to Belize in early January to begin collaborative work with World Pediatric Project (WPP). Plans are to learn more about a partnership between WPP and TCHH which would provide missing rehabilitation elements rather than replace current services provided by CARE Belize. There has been an invitation for members of our team to attend their annual Spina Bifida Clinic in April or May 2012.
World Pediatric Project specializes in pediatric critical care – primarily surgical care - and WPP partners with other organizations in being able to connect surgical patients with care that supplements or replaces surgical care, such as Orthotics, Physiotherapy, Speech and Language Therapy and Occupational Therapy. Team Canada Healing Hands is interested in doing capacity-building for the CARE Belize regional field officers and/or providing services.
We want to thank you for your generous support throughout the years and are hopeful that we can count on your continue support in 2012.