Social Issue

Haiti suffers from one of the highest infant mortality rates in the Caribbean region, with six deaths for every hundred babies. Poverty and unhealthiness cause illness and suffering among the child population, 8% of which suffers from severe malnutrition, and 22% suffers from chronic malnutrition.

Our Response

The medical-nutritional recovery project for children at the St. Damien Children’s Hospital helps to combat the alarming rate of malnutrition among children in Haiti, where one in ten dies from this cause.

Managed by NPH’s local partner in Haiti, NPFS, St. Damien Hospital provides high-quality medical and hospital treatment to 90,000 sick and vulnerable Haitian children each year.

Children suffering exclusively from malnutrition are cared for in the malnutrition unit of St. Damien Hospital, which is the only one in Haiti that has a specific nutrition care unit (NCU) to treat this problem. An average of 400 critically malnourished children are treated each year, with a mortality rate of less than 15%.

The duration of the nutritional recovery program varies depending on the degree of malnutrition of the patient, but usually includes approximately six weeks of hospitalisation. However, the most severe cases of malnutrition may require two to three months of hospitalisation, and are often extremely difficult to treat. Once this phase is over, the children who have been discharged are monitored and kept track of on an outpatient basis through weekly consultations to watch their progress in an external malnutrition clinic, the Kay O’Bois, located next to the hospital.

Expected Social Impact

With this collaboration we contribute to the treatment of 95 of the 400 children who are admitted annually to St. Damien Hospital.