Student plants roots for Haitian health clinic

Junior Matt Watters's summer break was not a time to relax. Instead, it was a life-changing experience.

Watters volunteered at St. Boniface hospital in Fond des Blancs, Haiti. His trip inspired him to make a new vow — to raise $25,000 to build a medical clinic in the small fishing village of Mouillage Fouquet to help the many locals he encountered.

"Conditions in Haiti have gotten worse every year," Watters says.

This past summer marked Watters' second visit to Haiti. Both trips have led him to make major life decisions. Watters says he first went to Vallières, Haiti in 2005 as part of his Eagle Scout project to collect and deliver over 1,500 items of soccer equipment to Haitian children. He only stayed two weeks, but the trip inspired him to go into medicine and become an emergency medical technician.

"I knew I wanted to go back and help out. The only thing I could do was enroll in an EMT course," Watters says.

He returned to Haiti last summer for five weeks, he says. He spent his first week back in Vallières helping to administer a scholarship fund run by Our Lady of Mercy from Park Ridge, NJ.

"It was crazy," he says. "There were kids running around with my uniform on."

After that, he traveled south to be an EMT for four weeks at St. Boniface.

"We feel lucky to have Matt with us," says Paul Fanning, director of development for the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation. "He brought a special skill set with him that we could use down there."

One particularly frustrating experience for Watters was when he witnessed the birth of a child who did not have enough surfactant, or wetting agents that lower the surface tension of a liquid, in his lungs. He says the only solution would have been to spray surfactant in the child's lungs, but the cost of the necessary drugs was too high.

"It's $80 for a bottle one-tenth the size of a nail polish bottle," Watters says. "It doesn't exist in Haiti."

Without proper medication, the baby's life was cut short.

Fanning says the closest city, Port-au-Prince, is four hours away by car and even a visit to the hospital is an all-day journey by foot for many of the locals. He says the clinic Watters wants to build would alleviate this problem.

Watters says the clinic will be a source of medicine, as well as education, focusing on important issues like health and hygiene. He says he was often frustrated by the limitations of Haitian hospitals.

"If a kid is malnourished and you get him healthy, he still goes back into the same environment," he says. "It's like putting a patch on a leaky boat."

Waters says the clinic is a unique project because it already has a staff and funding to pay the workers. St. Boniface Haiti Foundation receives $460,000 to $480,000 a year in New Partner Initiative grants from the Centers for Disease Control to fight AIDS, and the organization is allocated up to $600,000 a year if it can show cause. Running the clinic would fall under this stipend, but building the clinic would not.

Watters hopes to raise $25,000 to build the clinic. He says donations are important because the locals cannot raise the money themselves.

"It's not that they don't want to build a community," Watters says. "It's a matter of survival. They're trying to feed their kids."

He says building the clinic is his primary goal. While Waters stresses about the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), others stress about finding food.

"That hardship is unreal," he says.   

Watters is also forming a student organization on campus called Students for Haiti in order to raise money and awareness, to give an opportunity for students to become involved, and to reduce the time it will take to build a clinic.

"If I went out on my own, it could take years," Waters says.

Senior Liron Asher, a fellow club founder, wanted to help start the club as a way to network on campus.

"It's only been spread by word of mouth, but it's had very good feedback," Asher says.

"I've been very surprised and excited by the compassion and enthusiasm on campus," Watters says.

He stressed that time is an issue. Even if the money is raised, he said it will still take eight months to build the clinic because rocks have to be broken by hand and there are no roads accessible by cement trucks.

"I want it done yesterday. Each day that goes by is another day where a kid faces hardship," Watters says. "All it needs is a check."