Global doctors paint bleak picture for children with heart disease in Haiti

[Judi Lynn]

BY JACQUELINE CHARLES AND JAY WEAVER

UPDATED NOVEMBER 08, 2022 5:55 PM Loaded: 16.03%

When Dr. Alexandra Noisette returned to her native Haiti from Paris four years ago to begin treating Haitian children with heart disease, she knew it would not be easy.

“I could have actually stayed. But I wanted to come back to improve the care of these cardiac children,” she said, “to be useful to this community.”

But Noisette, one of the only pediatric cardiologists in Haiti and the only one working full-time in the highly specialized field, wasn’t expecting administering healthcare in Haiti to be as challenging as it has become in the last few years: regular road blockades, kidnapping gangs, chronic fuel and medication shortages, and widespread civil unrest leading to canceled appointments, or even death.

“It’s not easy,” she said. “If you have a child who really needs to have regular cardiology checkups, Haiti unfortunately is not the best place for him.”

This is the reality that concerns Haitian community advocates, Florida state Rep. Dotie Joseph, U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson and the foster parents of a 9-month-old boy whom the Florida Department of Children & Families and a Broward County judge are trying to send to Haiti.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/haiti/article268455927.html#storylink=cpy