Posted on January 17, 2012

Red Cross Commits $5.5 Million to New Teaching Hospital in Haiti

The American Red Cross has announced a $5.5 million commitment to support the construction and initial operating costs of a teaching hospital in Mirebalais, thirty miles north of Port-au-Prince.

Scheduled to be completed later this year, the Mirebalais National Teaching Hospital will have three wards for women's care, twenty outpatient consultation rooms, and six operating rooms, providing care to an estimated five hundred patients a day. The 180,000-square-foot facility — which is being built by Partners in Health in collaboration with Haiti's Ministry of Public Health and Population — will fill a void created after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010 destroyed the region's only nursing school and crippled its public teaching hospital.

Funding from the American Red Cross was provided as part of a series of health initiatives the organization is backing in Haiti. To date, the Red Cross has awarded more than $28 million to partner organizations working to sustain existing hospitals and programs, build new facilities, and respond to health emergences such as the cholera outbreak.

"Through the Mirebalais Hospital and our partners at PIH, not only are we able to support much needed medical care to the immediate community," said American Red Cross senior vice president of international services David Meltzer, "but we are also meeting our Red Cross organizational goals of creating sustainable development in Haiti by ensuring medical professionals have access to training and educational opportunities."