Hôpital Sainte Croix
Léogâne, Haiti



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1998
Celebrating Thirty Years

Hopital Sainte Croix was established in 1968 by the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti in partnership with the Presbyterian Church (USA). Its thirtieth anniversary was officially celebrated by a series of gala festivities during the last week of June 1998.

An International Medical/Scientific Conference held at El Rancho Hotel, Petion-ville, Haiti from 25-27 June 1998 was attended by over 150 physicians and others from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. The program included papers and postgraduate courses on a variety of topics of special interest, including advanced cardiac life support, community health, parasitology and infectious disease, gastroenterology, urology, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, cardiopulmonary disease, and others.

On Saturday June 27, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Sainte Trinite under the direction of Julio Racine, presented a Gala Concert in its concert hall, Salle Sainte Cecile, for the benefit of Hopital Sainte Croix.

On Sunday June 28, a Festival Eucharist was held at Eglise Ste. Croix in Leogane, with the celebrant The Right Reverend Jean Zache Duracin, Episcopal Bishop of Haiti, and Concelebrant Mgr. A. Luc Garnier, retired Bishop of Haiti, assisted by many other clergy of the diocese.

Following the Festival Eucharist, the liturgical procession followed the cross to the hospital building, where the Bishop of Haiti dedicated a new radio station which will play a significant role in the hospital's continuing community health education program. That ceremony was followed by groundbreaking for a complex to house the hospital's new School of Nursing at a new site at the edge of town.




Hôpital Sainte Croix (Holy Cross Hospital) is
a 120 bed general hospital in Leogane, Haiti, located about thirty kilometers west of Port-au-Prince. It is owned by the Episcopal Church of Haiti, and operates with partnership support from the Presbyterian Church (USA).

It also receives support from Children's Medical Missions of Haiti (an Episcopal endowment), the Medical Benevolence Foundation (Presbyterian), and other church-related and private sources. It receives special-project support from several international agencies.

Dr. Jack Guy Lafontant became the hospital's first Haitian medical director (general director) in January 1995. He is an internist and graduate of the University of Haiti School of Medicine, and in 1994 completed a fellowship in gastroenterology at the Centre Hospitalier et Universitaire de Fort-de-France, Martinique.

Medical Care

The full-time Haitian medical staff provides inpatient care and specialty clinics in medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics-gynecology, and general surgery, and dentistry. It has part-time medical staffing in radiology, clinical and anatomic pathology, orthopedics, urology, and ophthalmology. There is a 24-hour emergency room. There are four operating rooms in a recently expanded surgical suite. A new recovery room suite was opened in March 1996.

There are special clinical labs for echocardiography and GI endoscopy. The hospital has recently renovated and assumed responsibility for the local eye clinic formerly operated by Eye Care of Haiti.

Regional Health Program

The Leogane region is an extensive rural area which includes high mountains, a broad alluvial plain devoted largely to sugar cane production, and coastal fishing communities on the Bay of Gonave. The town of Leogane is the market center for the region.

Hopital Sainte Croix operates a Community Medical Center at nearby Darbonne, which since 1982 has trained more than nine hundred healthworkers for Leogane and Haiti. As of February 1996, there are 123 healthworkers and 200 trained midwives serving in the Leogane region. The Community Medical Center coordinates and resupplies this network which serves parish and village clinics throughout the immediate rural region.

Hopital Sainte Croix also cooperates with the Centers for Disease Control in significant public health research in the region, including ongoing studies in dengue fever and filiariasis.

Medical Visits

Hopital Sainte Croix invites visits from volunteer physicians, dentists and other health professionals from abroad. Medical visitors assist in specialty care, consult with Haitian medical staff, hold continuing medical education conferences, and support and encourage the hospital staff as it seeks to develop a high standard of medical care in the hemisphere's most needy nation.

Specialists have played key roles in the development of hospital services. However, family physicians, willing to go out into the villages with interpreters and Haitian physicians, to hold clinics, screen patients and refer to the hospital, are also very important to the hospital program, for they encourage and support the work of local physicians and of the community health workers.

Medical visitors may come as individuals or in teams. A team might consist of physicians and/or other professionals from various specialties, for example colleagues from a hospital or a church; or it might be a self-contained surgical team consisting of surgeon, technician(s), and anesthesia personnel.

Visitors are met at the airport, and are housed and fed in secure and comfortable visitor quarters on the hospital grounds. Because of the very limited financial resources, visitors must pay their own air transportation and a small per diem fee for room and board (currently US$ 25).

The language of the people is Haitian Creole; the administrative language is French. Most administrative and professional staff also speak English. Translators are provided as necessary.

[Visiting Haiti]

For more information:

Dr. Jack Lafontant, Leogane Haiti:

Telephone: [011-509] 87-0746 or 87-0749

Email: stecroix@Qmail.com

US Airmail (weight limit, 2 lbs):

The (USA) delivery address for freight (over 2 lbs):

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Echoes: The Hopital Sainte Croix Newsletter
Children's Medical Missions of Haiti
Ecole Sainte Vincent, Port-au-Prince
Pazapa, ("Step by Step"), Jacmel

Update 02 July 1998