NOVA Hope for Haiti is sending our 11th medical mission to Haiti tomorrow. In partnership with the Church of the Presentation in Upper Saddle River, NJ, we are sending a team of 26 doctors, nurses, translators and support volunteers to open an emergency care clinic for 7 days in Cavaillon, Haiti.
The bins are packed with supplies, the texts, emails, and phone calls are flying between team members in New York, New Jersey, Miami and Port au Prince. The team is exited. The vehicles are rented, the medicines are in Port au Prince (athough some are stills stuck in customs, yet again… par for the course!) and the Aldy Hotel is waiting for our arrival.
Tomorrow we will fly to Port au Prince, retrieve our supplies in the madhouse that is the new temporary airport, fight our way through an army of redcaps, to load up our truck, and board our busses for the 5 hour drive to Aquin.
Then on Sunday, we will get a nice early start. For those team members who want to go to Church we will try to make it to Mass in Cavaillon, and then we’ll be off to the community center behind Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church which we will tranform into a top notch clinic. Sheets will hang to create examination rooms, the stage will serve as the pharmacy, chairs will be staged for waiting patients, our paperwork will be organized at check in, and we will be ready to open our doors for the hundreds of waiting patients who will inevitably appear Monday morning. We hope to see about 1,500 patients again this coming week.
The days will be hot and long, but the comradery in the evenings refreshes our tireless volunteers and helps them get ready for the next hot day of great work.
To all of our donors who make these missions possible: you are part of this team, you are providing medical care where there is none, and I thank you.
And to all friends of NOVA Hope for Haiti, please keep our team in your prayers as we travel to Haiti this week, and the people of Haiti also, who continue to struggle against incredibly poverty.
Thank you,
-Joe
