Catholics and Haiti

Unfortunately the Catholic Diocese of Peoria and OSF-SFMC withdrew their support for Haitian Hearts children that need heart surgery. This happened several years ago and is well documented on this web log. The bottom line is that the Diocese was and is afraid to challenge the largest Catholic medical center south of Chicago.

Morality has taken a back seat to money. Haitians that need repeat heart surgery at OSF-SFMC are now dying.

On March 9, 2008 the Catholic Post, which is the newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of Peoria, ran a full page advertisement for Cross International Catholic Outreach. Below are some excerpts from the ad. I would think that the Post and the Diocese of Peoria would feel a bit hypocritical running this ad since the Catholic Diocese of Peoria and OSF-SFMC are not following what Cross International is stating must be done by Catholics for Haiti.

The second part of the advertisement is entitled “U.S. Catholics “Key” to Positive Changes in Haiti”.

Monsignor Mike Flanagan of Cross International has worked in Haiti’s Central Plateau. He urges U.S. Catholics to help the destitute villages of Haiti.

“In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus gave us a preview of the final judgment, and the power of those words burned in my soul as I walked through the village,” Msgr. Flanagan said. When Jesus related the last judgment of mankind, He made the shocking revelation—that help given to the poor would equate to help given to Him, and that those who ignored the poor would be judged as if they had ignored Christ Himself. The connection to Haiti is both obvious and challenging. That destitute village is a place where Christ abides today. He is there among the poor, calling for our help.”

Flanagan also encourages Catholics to see the Judgment story in Matthew as a blessing rather than as a source of anxiety or fear. “We shouldn’t see our actions in Haiti as simply feeding a child or building a home for a poor family. We should see our outreach as a loving response to Jesus himself,” according to Msgr. Flanagan.
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Saint Boniface Haiti Foundation is another wonderful organization that has many projects in Haiti. Saint Boniface Hospital is the center of their work in Fond des Blancs, a small village south of Port-au-Prince.

Many volunteers come to offer their services in Fond des Blancs and the following was written by volunteer Genevieve Lysen:

Reflections from Haiti--

Each day here in Haiti my eyes have opened wider to the reality of inequity and injustice in our world. Today we came upon a little settlement where I saw the most abject poverty I could ever have ever imagined….an 8 by 10 foot concrete structure with one twin bed, a leaky tin roof, and no sign of any food, bedding, clothing, etc. save for what the 8 people who lived inside were wearing; a sick mother who couldn’t have weighed more than 80 pounds and could not stand, 2 sets of wailing naked twins, a three or four year old taking care of the sets of twins, and one 10 year old boy and a seventeen year old boy who was the breadwinner for his family. He was born when his mother was 13 years old. She is only 30 now but looks 50. It was absolutely heartbreaking. I had some Clif bars and I divided them among the family. I cried on the walk down from the mountain. Their house was the highest point in Fond des Blancs. The view was amazing, so much beauty surrounding such destitution. My experiences in Haiti will change my life and my career path. The people of Fond des Blancs, their patience, their hope, and their honesty give me back the faith that I had lost in humanity. At the same time, the state of this country is testament to the greed, corruption, abuse, discrimination and ignorance of man. Haiti is a country in economic and social ruin where the people are the most dedicated, bright and hardworking as anywhere.

"We All Breathe the Same Air"

"Our generation's greatest challenges---in environment, demography, poverty and global politics--are also our most exciting opportunity. Ours is the generation that can end extreme poverty, turn the tide against climate change and head off a massive, thoughtless and irreversible extinction of other species. Ours is the generation that can, and must, solve the unresolved conundrum of combining economic well-being with environmental sustainability. We will need science, technology and professionalism, but most of all we will need to subdue our fears and cynicism.

John F. Kennedy reminded us that peace will come by recognizing our common wealth. "If we can not end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

Jeffry Sachs, TIME, March 24, 2008

Worlds Apart

“I know the color of that blood; it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that color. That drop of blood is my death warrant. I must die.”

The British poet, John Keats, trained as a physician, gave himself this accurate prognosis in 1820 after an episode of hemoptysis (coughing blood). He realized he had contracted tuberculosis. He died soon afterward at the age of 25.

The New England Journal of Medicine, March 13, 2008, has two lead articles regarding tuberculosis. The articles are about tuberculosis in Africa and India. Below are key comments and figures from these articles mixed in with statistics regarding Haiti’s current epidemic of tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis is a terrible disease. Who ever called it “consumption” was right. People get trapped in their tiny little bodies and are unable to provide for themselves or their families. They are indeed consumed by their illness.

Tuberculosis is also highly contagious and can be spread just by talking with someone with active tuberculosis. Children are very susceptible to this disease.

Tuberculosis ruins people, families, and society.

The bottom line that needs to be stated early is that tuberculosis is preventable, treatable, and a disease of poverty. And their have been curative medications available for over 50 years.

So here is the depressing news regarding tuberculosis:

1. Africa is facing the worst tuberculosis epidemic since the advent of the antibiotic era. Africa, home to 11% of the world’s population, carries 29% of the global burden of tuberculosis cases and 34% of related deaths. More than half a million people die each year from tuberculosis in Africa.

2. During the 1990’s tuberculosis killed more people worldwide than in any other decade in history. Tuberculosis medications have been available since the 1950’s.

3. The average incidence (all new cases per 100,000 population) of tuberculosis in African counties more than doubled between 1990 and 2005, from 149 to 343. This is in contrast to the stable or declining rates in most other regions of the world.

4. The estimated incidence of tuberculosis in Haiti in 2004 was 306. And I don’t really believe this number. My guess is that tuberculosis is vastly underreported in Haiti.

5. The estimated incidence of tuberculosis in India in 2008 is 200/100,000 population. The rate of confirmed infection in India is startling. Researchers at a medical school in northern India found an incidence of about 17 new cases of active tuberculosis per 1000 medical residents per year (as compared with about 2 cases per 1000 in the general population and 0.05 in the general U.S. population.) Thus, one take home message from these horrible statistics regarding young Indian physicians is the compelling evidence of nosocomial transmission…tuberculosis is very contagious.

6. The estimated incidence of tuberculosis in the United States in 2006 was 3.4 cases. This was the lowest TB incidence ever recorded in the United States. The TB rate among foreign born persons in the United States was 9.5 times that of U.S.-born persons. The TB rates among blacks were 8.4 times higher than rates among whites.

7. Yes, you read these numbers correctly. How can one compare “rates of tuberculosis” of 300 in Haiti to 3 in the United States? Haiti is 90 minutes by air from Miami.

8. The growth of the tuberculosis epidemic in Africa and Haiti is attributable to several factors, the most important being the HIV epidemic. Autopsy studies have shown that 30-40% of HIV-infected adults die from tuberculosis.

9. South African gold miners who have one of the highest incidence rates of tuberculosis in the world, but rates remained stable in the 90’s among HIV-negative miners, while rates among HIV-positive miners increased by a factor of 10. (The cellular immunocompetence of this population became impaired, and thus susceptibility to tuberculosis increased.)

10. By the way, the incidence of tuberculosis in Haiti is higher than in South Africa. Incidence rates of tuberculosis in Yemen, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Guyana, Thailand, Russia, Romania, North Korea, Iraq, Vietnam, Mongolia, Nepal, China, Gabon, Bolivia, Botswana, India, Sudan, Laos, Ghana, Guinea, Pakistan, Niger, and Chad are all LESS than Haiti.

11. The ability of African, Indian, and Haitian health care systems to respond to, manage, and contain the growing number of cases of tuberculosis is constrained by limitations of funding facilities, personnel, drug supplies, and laboratory capacity. Bad infrastructures yield bad tuberculosis statistics.

12. Another critical factor concerns early diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis, which limits the spread of the disease and reduces deaths. Again, the infrastructure and the public health capabilities of the that society dictate how quickly tuberculosis is diagnosed and treated.

13. Sensitive tests for diagnosis of a disease need to be present to diagnose efficiently. Throughout Africa, diagnosis rests on the microscopical detection of acid-fast bacilli (the TB germ) in sputum, an insensitive technique that is particularly ill suited to the detection of tuberculosis in HIV-infected patients, who have fewer bacilli in their sputum and have more extrapulmonary tuberculosis than HIV-negative patients. WHO estimates that only half of all persons with smear-positive tuberculosis are identified. Modern culture and nucleic acid-amplification systems are rarely available.

14. As a result, many people remain ill and contagious with tuberculosis for prolonged periods before the disease is detected, and thousands die without ever having received a diagnosis of tuberculosis. Even with diagnosis, the average rate of successful treatment is less than 70%, which makes both relapse and the emergence of drug resistance common.

15. The availability of point-of-care diagnostic tests could substantially reduce the incidence of and mortality from tuberculosis and prompt earlier treatment, thus limiting transmission. (Point-of-care tests are tests that can be done quickly and easily at the site, rather than waiting weeks for culture results to return.) And rapid detection of drug resistant strains would facilitate earlier access to appropriate therapy. Better use of existing, highly sensitive culture techniques could reduce mortality rates associated with tuberculosis by 20% or more.

16. A new tuberculosis vaccine could protect future generations.

17. Interventions directed at people with the highest risk, including families of patients with tuberculosis or HIV infection could be extremely effective. But this would entail giving the "preferential medical option" to the poor. Who wants to do that?

18. For patients with HIV, preventative therapy with isoniazid can reduce tuberculosis incidence, yet less than 1% of all HIV-infected people worldwide who could benefit from this intervention receive it. Antiretroviral therapy alone is insufficient to control tuberculosis, but analyses suggest that isoniazid significantly augments the effect of HIV drugs.
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Since the resurgence of TB in the United States during 1985-1992, the annual TB rate has decreased steadily. The TB rate in 2006 was the lowest recorded since national reporting began in 1953. The US public health system responded.

Tuberculosis is a disease of poor people around the world. And as we all know, diseases of the poor are frequently ignored. Maybe, due to the fact that people travel and tuberculosis is so highly contagious, the people that have will take more interest in eradicating tuberculosis.

In Haiti, Africa, India and many other developing countries, increased investments in research, health care systems, diagnostic laboratories, human resources, and public health services needs to occur to control the disease, death, and destruction caused by tuberculosis.

References:

New England Journal of Medicine-- March 13, 2008
Journal of the American Medical Association-- April 25, 2007
Global Health Reporting.org

A Just Social Order

The Lancet published a series of articles in 2005 regarding the religions of the world and how their philosophies relate to health.

Hazel Markwell wrote about the “Catholic View” in the September 24, 2005 issue.

Below are some salient features from Markwell’s article:

1. The Catholic understanding of sickness, suffering, and death is grounded in a belief in Jesus Christ who, as the incarnation of God, suffered, died, and resurrected.

2. In light of this faith and hope for an afterlife, Catholics accept that although an effort must be made to eliminate sickness, suffering, and death, these things can also have a positive meaning.

2. In Catholic bioethics, two basic human values ground all others: human dignity, and the interconnectedness of every individual. The value of dignity of the individual arises from the belief that life has intrinsic worth because people are created in the image and likeness of God. Respect for human life results from this principle.

3. Catholics believe that people are stewards, rather than owners of their own bodies, and are accountable to God for the life that has been given to them, and for this reason life is said to be sacred.

4. Gaudium et Spes, one of the documents of Vatican II, makes the point that the dignity of the human person lies above all in the fact that he or she is called into a relationship with God. As social beings who are connected to each other in society, we also share a responsibility for one another.

5. Belief in the value of the common good calls us to promote a just social order. This just order demands that we remain true to the value of charity or solidarity, in which we have a responsibility to respond to others in need, in particular the poor.

6. This responsibility requires a commitment not only to the poor in our midst but also to those throughout the world.

7. However, the huge gap between the rich and the poor of the world is widening, in large part due to the debt owed by developing countries.

8. The impetus and foundation for this commitment to the poor lies in a notion of justice that is grounded in love and an adherence to the message in the Gospel of Matthew (25:40): “…in so far as you did this to one of th4 least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me”.

Father Gerard Jean-Juste practiced and believes in the common good in Haiti. Hopefully, he will be back in Haiti soon practicing his Catholic beliefs which promote the common good.

OSF in Peoria needs to lift their embargo on Haitian Hearts patients and follow the Catholic philosophy as outlined in the Lancet. Three more young Haitian women will die soon unless OSF sees the light.