My source as posted to the GANM and on HIFA 2015 lists:
I am writing the (GANM) community to ask for assistance in gathering online midwifery and nursing materials - in the French or Creole language, for Haiti.
The National Nurse School University and Faculty of Medicine in Haiti has collapsed and they have lost most of their training materials. Dr. Larouche was killed in that collapse - he was teaching an OB course to the midwifery class at the time. I do not know the fate of the nursing/midwifery students, but one can imagine that the outcome is probably not a good one. Dr. Larouche was filling the void left by the untimely death of Madame G.Francoeur last year (she died in an auto accident).
Midwifery in Haiti was just recovering after the sadness of the loss of Mme Francoeur - and the earthquake has now destroyed most everything that they had.
Agnes Jacobs, UNFPA survived and has been emailing from Haiti. She and her colleagues are working to pick up the pieces and try to reconstruct materials for training midwives and nurses in life saving skills.
I am writing to members of the GANM asking for support in finding DIGITAL materials that we can provide to Agnes for the time being. It is VERY hard to get shipments of books and things to Haiti right now, but in the future, I suspect that Agnes will be able to use books, and guides, and computers to rebuild midwifery in Haiti. So eventually we will ask for books and things, but right now it is very hard to get these types of things to her. I know she is not alone, I know that COHI, PAHO, and many others are on the ground. I think the GANM can work with all these others to help in whatever way we can.
Johns Hopkins is sending a team to Haiti, including Dr. Beth Sloand who has been travelling to Haiti with students for over a decade. Beth does not have room to take printed materials, but she can maybe take a packed hard drive or CDs/DVDs that we load with teaching materials. Agnes does have a computer and internet (sporadically) - so I have been discussing with her the potential of sending digital materials which she can start to use right away until printed materials can be provided.
She welcomes health materials in French and or Creole primarily. They should be materials that can *instantly be used to teach midwives and community health workers* - so scientific articles that require interpretation and reconstruction into teaching materials are not what I am asking for at the moment. Right now there are no resources to turn scientific literature into teaching materials. Do you have teaching materials that you would be willing to share?
I would like to ask that people send either direct links to online resources that we can copy down to a CD or send useful teaching materials that we can put on a CD.
Please email them to the GANM or to me (pabbott2 @ son.jhmi.edu)
Regine Marton wrote already directing us to look at Hesperian and the WHO Reproductive Library (in French). We have the Hesperian material now. The WHO library is helpful.
If you have any quality materials for training of midwives that you would like to donate or direct us to find, please let us know. Please send scientifically sound materials - the last thing that Haiti needs are questionable methods or what we call in the US "hocus-pocus" (unproven claims or "magic").
I hope this makes sense and that the GANM community will come together to help Haiti in a “different” way. I think what we are doing is unique – while of course there are huge needs for emergency care and the like we are looking one step ahead to helping Haiti rebuild its educational infrastructure.
Best Regards,
Patti Abbott
GANM Moderator and "Electronic Midwife"
