Pittsburgh obstetrician/gynecologist Daniel Lattanzi, MD, accompanied a missionary to Haiti in 1996 and discovered, as they traveled from town to town, that no medical care was available.
"I couldn’t believe what I saw. Malaria and tuberculosis were rampant, illness and malnutrition the norm," Dr. Lattanzi said.
He was horrified to learn that as many as 8 percent of women die in childbirth and a third of Haiti’s children died before age 5.
Dr. Lattanzi returned to the states and started the Mission for Haiti’s Children—a nonprofit organization committed to improving health care, education, and economic development. As part of the Mission’s work, they built a clinic in La Croix that now treats 25,000 patients a year and is supported by physician groups that visit weekly.
The clinic offers general medical and pediatric care as well as contraception, prenatal care, and midwife services. The villagers who can’t come to the clinic are visited by clinic-trained community health nurses who travel by bicycle.
"If you can teach people to serve as health care workers, then the benefit doesn’t end with the mission," Dr. Lattanzi said.
Dr. Lattanzi’s organization also has built a maternity center, a school, and a grain mill, and helped to establish a fish farm, a rabbit farm, and a well-drilling program.