Fundraiser will benefit construction of hospital in Haiti

By Mary Ann Wyand

A simple beans and rice luncheon and program on Nov. 19 in Indianapolis will raise funds to help build Visitation Hospital at Petite Riviere de Nippes in Haiti.

The “Hope and Healing for Haiti” fundraiser will be held from noon to 1 p.m. on Nov. 19 at the Hook’s Discovery and Learning Center, 1227 W. 29th St., in Indianapolis.

The program includes presentations by several speakers and a video about the hospital plans.

The not-for-profit project is being coordinated by the Visitation Hospital Foundation based in Nashville, Tenn. Construction of the hospital is expected to begin by early 2006.

There are about 8 million people in Haiti but only 30 hospitals and about 450 physicians. Less than a dozen hospitals are full-service facililties. The rest are medical clinics that only provide basic health care services.

“The initial building will be a medical clinic, which will house radiology facilities, examination rooms and birthing rooms,” St. Thomas Aquinas parishioner Joe Zelenka of Indianapolis said. “We’re now raising funds for the rest of the hospital, which will be surgical wards. But the real beauty of this hospital is that it will be the only hospital in all of Haiti to do pediatric cardiovascular surgery.”

Anise Fluerentus, a 13-year-old girl from Belle Riviere, Haiti, died of complications from heart surgery in September at St. Petersburg, Fla.

Her mother, Onise, was unable to accompany her to Florida because the U.S. Embassy did not grant her a visa. Anise needed the surgery to repair significant problems in her heart.

“Having a hospital in Haiti where children could have major surgeries and their families could be present with them is so vital,” Zelenka said. “A group of physicians, a pediatric cardiovascular team from Tennessee, has agreed, once the hospital is built, to come to Haiti to perform 150 to 200 pediatric cardiovascular surgeries a year.

“The people of Haiti live on hope,” Zelenka said. “The real blessing is the spiritual connection” when helping people in Haiti and other Third World countries.

“We are being prayed for by them,” he said, when American parishes partner with faith communities in Haiti and other countries through the Parish Twinning Program of the Americas.

“I’m convinced that we do very little for Haiti, but Haiti does so much for us,” Zelenka said. “Haiti gives us a better appreciation of our own wealth, our own riches, our own blessings, but it also calls us to the real Gospel values to reach out to the poorest of the poor. And that’s the real gift that I see [in helping the poor].”

(For reservations or more information about the fundraiser to help build Visitation Hospital at Petite Riviere de Nippes in Haiti, call Joe Zelenka at 317-283-7061 before the Nov. 16 registration deadline. For additional information, log on to the website at www.visitationhospital.org.) †