Making a colored mural in the TB/Infectious Disease unit at L’Hôpital de l’Université d’Etat d’Haiti using teamwork, sharing and collaboration.
Donate to Ti Kay, the non-profit organization that is treating tuberculosis patients at the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, by clicking here.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
About Tuberculosis:
One third of the world’s population is thought to have been infected with M. tuberculosis, and new infections occur at a rate of about one per second. In 2007 there were an estimated 13.7 million chronic active cases, and in 2010 8.8 million new cases, and 1.45 million deaths, mostly in developing countries. The absolute number of tuberculosis cases has been decreasing since 2006 and new cases since 2002. In addition, more people in the developing world contract tuberculosis because their immune systems are more likely to be compromised due to higher rates of AIDS. The distribution of tuberculosis is not uniform across the globe; about 80% of the population in many Asian and African countries test positive in tuberculin tests, while only 5–10% of the U.S. population test positive.
Systemic symptoms include fever, chills, night sweats, appetite loss, weight loss, and fatigue. Finger clubbing may also occur.
TB in Haiti:
TB is eminently treatable and patients are almost always cured. It has all but disappeared from the rich nations but still plagues parts of the world to an extent that most Americans and Europeans would find astonishing. Haiti has the highest per capita TB burden in the Latin America and Caribbean region, and has the highest mortality rate related to Tuberculosis in the Americas. After HIV/AIDS, TB is the country’s greatest infectious cause of mortality in both youth and adults. It shares what Dr. Paul Farmer calls “a noxious synergy” with AIDS.
TB and AIDS create a deadly synergy. In much of the world, TB is the most common proximate cause of death among people who died of AIDS. But because TB mainly infects mostly developing nations, Pharmaceutical companies have for years lagged behind in their development of new technologies. There is no vaccine. Most TB drugs and diagnostic tools were developed a quarter-century ago. Read more
About L’Hôpital de l’Université d’Etat d’Haiti:
Ti Kay means “Little House” in Haitian Kreyol. TB was traditionally the “malady of the little house.” It was the disease of the small houses where people were quarantined. But at the same time, given the problems of housing many patients face, it is currently a disease of those in need of little houses or with only the littlest houses.
Ti Kay, Inc. is a medical non-profit organization that aims to treat, and hence prevent, tuberculosis in Port Au Prince, Haiti. Based at the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince HUEH, (L’Hôpital de l’Université d’Etat d’Haïti), work focuses on treating inpatients and outpatients. After the earthquake when the state sanatorium was not functional, the head nurse of the TB program and Megan Coffee, a US doctor, established an inpatient program for the care. The outpatient treatment was expanded after the earthquake.
Ti Kay supplements the work of the state hospital and nurses by providing an on-site medical doctor and additional nursing care, as well as ensuring that all care is free to both inpatients and outpatients. The PNLT (National TB program) provides all TB medications free to patients, the hospital’s PEPFAR-funded HIV clinic provides free HIV medications, and the state run hospital provides many other medications and has provided food and oxygen. Many additional medications and supplies, as well as facility costs, and food and oxygen, are bought with the work of Ti Kay. Donations made to Ti Kay go directly to providing essential care for patients, including oxygen for critically ill patients and food supplements for malnourished patients.
Megan Coffee, MD, Ph.D.
Dr. Coffee was a UC San Francisco infectious disease fellow who was at Berkeley, California doing computer models tracking the spread of communicable diseases when the earthquake struck Haiti. With so many hospitals and clinics reduced to rubble, and most foreign doctors specializing in trauma care and surgery, there was a pressing need for infectious disease specialists. Cat Laine, who works for Appropriate Infrastructure Development group (AIDG) contacted Coffee and asked if she might come to Haiti. Dr. Coffee had intended to travel there in May on saved vacation time.
Two weeks after the earthquake, she postponed her postdoctoral research fellowship and headed for Port-Au-Prince via the Dominican Republic. Coffee arrived in Haiti with medicine, headed for a field hospital, but was asked if she could work at Hopital l’Universite d’Etat d’Haïti (the General Hospital), where she met the Charge Nurse for the TB Clinic before the earthquake. Together they, along with Haitian nurses from the hospital who were recruited, established a TB inpatient and outpatient ward under tents at the General Hospital. There had been a tent for Quarantine of Infectious Diseases, which they quickly realized was only needed for Tuberculosis—as it was the only infectious disease which required isolation in Haiti at the time. Dr. Coffee has worked with these nurses and others since January 2010 to continue this ward, now housed in a building, which has grown to see over 1,000 patients since the earthquake.
