Dear Friends, Colleagues, Former Patients, Admirers and Associates of Doctor Megan Coffee:
Dr. Coffee is Providing free, high-quality medical care to Tuberculosis and HIV patients in Haiti.
Dr. Coffee has been living in a tent or small concrete bunker since she arrived in Haiti in 2010.
Dr. Coffee works 12 hour days at the clinic. She handles everything: patient care; grant writing; the creation of healthy food systems, transparent banking records, sourcing medical supplies; and management of interns and volunteers.
It's simple.
If we band together, 200 strong, we can help Megan find a lovely little house of her own near the clinic. Dr. Paul Farmer once advised her (above all else) to take care of herself. And she just isn't listening ... so lets unite and listen for her.
Please donate just $10 toward the goal of $2,000 to rent a house for one year for Dr. Coffee so she may have a small respite, close to the clinic when she needs it.
Warmly,
Your friends at Project HOPE Art
(we're the ones who make art in the clinic)
...
About Dr. Megan Coffee
Megan Coffee, MD, Ph.D.
Dr. Coffee was a UC San Francisco infectious disease fellow who was at Berkeley, California developing computer models to track 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, Coffee 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.
...
About Ti Kay
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.
