Since the Haiti earthquake over two months ago, ensuring older people, like Idalliese (right), get food, shelter, medical care and maintain their dignity has been a huge challenge.

Luckily though, we have great people working with us. For the next ten days, Dr. Martin Gorbien, a geriatrician, and Lauren Kessler, a licensed clinical social worker, both from Rush University Medical Center, are in Haiti.

Responding to the needs of older people

Martin and Lauren will be among the first older adult specialists brought to Haiti to respond to the very complex medical and emotional needs of older people.

While they’re in Haiti, they will visit the municipal nursing home with a mobile clinic, as well as other care homes and hospitals. They will also assist with distribution of food, water and supplies.

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As HelpAge’s Haiti Communications Coordinator, I’m sharing one of my first experiences of the situation older people are facing here. I visited the Asile St. Jean de Dieu, a nursing home in Petit Goave where HelpAge is assisting older people:

I learnt about the history of Asile St. Jean de Dieu from its founding director Mademoiselle Mayard, a 65 year old school teacher.  Back in the 1970s, the older people of Petit Goave were housed in a high school.

With the help of the local priest, Mlle Mayard found a church and coverted it into a nursing home.  Another priest in Puerto Rico heard of the project and decided to help by sending money every month for years.

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Latest on HelpAge’s relief effort out in Haiti:

Wednesday 10 February:

HelpAge distributed food and basic essential items.  It is the first open-air distribution made exclusively for older people. The distribution was planned with IPESI (Institute of Promotion of Studies and Integrated Care), a group run by Madame Njemba Jean Suze.

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Bright and early Marbey and I went to Merlin’s office so that I could introduce myself to other staff members we hadn’t met before! It’s a bustling office with many people coming and going. Field teams are in and out attending training workshops and unfortunately some of the key people, including the Security Officer were not around to speak to but we will catch them at another time. (more…)

A beautiful morning lured me out onto the balcony. Later I met Marbey in the garden for a briefing on the current situation and progress of our programme set up to date. We talked and talked and soon realised we had a hell of lot to do in the next 3 weeks!

I ordered some tea, a quintessentially English thing to do on a sunny Saturday afternoon, oh yes indeed I will be forever an Englishwoman abroad. Rattling cups accompanied the brightly coloured procession of three large and noisy wedding parties out onto the lawn, preening and jostling, laughing and all vying for the prime spot by Lake Kivu for photographs (see example on the right).
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At 6.00am, I disembarked and wandered up and down, down and up, the departures concourse thinking about how I could fill six and a half bottom-numbing hours wait before my next flight to Kigali in Rwanda. I opted for a masala tea in the Java cafe, followed by a stint in the Kenya airways transit lounge.

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HelpAge works in emergency situations all over the world to ensure older people’s needs and contributions are met by humanitarian response.
As HelpAge’s Emergencies Programme Coordinator, I travelled out to Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo to support the development of our response and rehabilitation programme following the recent conflict in North Kivu province.

This is a completely honest blog with my observations, thoughts and feelings so that readers can get an idea of what it is like to land here and try to become established here as a new NGO, what the challenges and opportunities are etc.

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