Welcome

Team Canada Healing Hands Inc is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the provision of rehabilitative education, training, and care in areas of need.

L’Equipe Canadienne – Healing Hands Inc. est une organisation à but non-lucratif dédiée à subvenir à l’éducation et l’entraînement en réadaptation ainsi qu’à administrer des soins dans les endroits qui en ont le plus besoin.

Haiti Earthquake Response and Priorities

HHH and TCHH have committed to facilitate the deployment of rehabilitation professionals over the next year, to both assist in staffing the Kay Kapab clinic and Prosthetics and Orthotics facility, and other rehabilitation facilities that have expressed needs. These include the Project Medishare tent hospital/rehabilitation tent, St. Boniface Hospital in Fonds des Blanc which has admitted many spinal cord injured patients, and other facilities as identified by Handicap International.

Our immediate priorities remain:

re-establishment and provision of rehabilitation training opportunities for Haitian health and community workers,
reconstruction and operation of our outpatient rehabilitation and P&O clinic while continuing to staff our temporary facility, and
continuing with the HiPOE initiative, which has now been expanded due to the number of persons with amputations following the earthquake.

For the longer term, we remain committed to the construction of a permanent Rehabilitation Institute, with capacity for both inpatient and outpatient care as well as training.

Over 100 rehabilitation volunteers from Canada and USA are already scheduled over the next 3 months, and a coordinator will work to facilitate scheduling to ensure we have the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

All funds raised through recent earthquake responses will be dedicated to the priorities outlined above.

We sincerely thank all of our supporters who have helped us to make these important initiatives move forward.

For the most current news of the response to the Haiti earthquake disaster see One Response:Haiti and TCHH News.

We continue to gather names of potential volunteers here.

Report from Port au Prince

January 26th, 2010

On Tuesday, January 19 five past volunteers from Team Canada and Healing Hands for Haiti left Canada and USA to join a Handicap International response team on the ground in Port au Prince. The five members, lead by Dr. Colleen O’Connell included specialists in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Prosthetics, Orthotics, Physical Therapy, and Occupational Therapy. All have been working diligently to assist in coordinating the care of the many newly disabled patients resulting from the January 12 earthquake.

One of the first duties was to assess the condition of the Healing Hands for Haiti medical campus. Upon inspection by an expert it was deemed that all buildings are uninhabitable at this time. The guesthouse where the teams stay is still standing and in the best shape, but will require significant repairs. Other buildings are completely destroyed or are well on the way to toppling. It is with a heavy hearts that we must report that two tenants in the apartment building did not survive its collapse. All of us at Team Canada HealingHands extend our deepest sympathies to their families.

The Handicap International (HI) team then turned their attention to gathering data regarding types and numbers of injuries to ensure the HI response will meet the needs for the patient population. The Therapists started individual patient data collection, early treatment and training and giving supplies, while the others gathered detailed general data collection from hospitals – aiming to visit all hospitals in the area. The goal is to determine current and longer term needs, types of diagnoses, etc.

As news reports have stated and the research confirms, the numbers of amputations are staggering. In addition the team has seen dozens of traumatic brain injuries and spinal cord injuries. All patients in most hospitals (or most patients in all hospitals) are outside in virtual tent cities of wards– buildings are mostly not safe or only parts of hospitals are safe. Patients are also too scared to go inside. General Hospital is a tangled network of many independent NGOs and military and government agencies.

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Welcome

Haiti Earthquake Response and Priorities

Report from Port au Prince

Click to read an account by orphanage staff and residents of the earthquake and its aftermath in Jacmel