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Doctor Rebuilds Hospital Where He Was Born
FrontLines - July 2009
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Dr. Serge Virtilus, director of the St. Nicholas Hospital in St. Marc, speaks with USAID’s John Waggoner.
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St. Marc, Haiti—“I was born right here—in this hospital—in 1965,” said Dr. Serge Virtilus, who studied internal medicine in Brussels but resisted the lure of an easier life abroad.
He is now the director of the hospital where he was born, St. Nicholas Hospital in St. Marc, which is undergoing extensive reconstruction in partnership with USAID.
In his white laboratory coat, Virtilus covers the hospital grounds in large strides, greeting staff and patients, right and left, as he moves from administrative buildings to triage, recovery wards, laboratories,
pediatrics, emergency rooms, surgery, and dental facilities.
Being from the community allows him to console and cajole the many patients he knows personally
or through their extended families, often resorting to his infectious good humor.
The hospital in St. Marc—heart of the fertile Artibonite Valley region beginning two hours north of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince—is being upgraded by the Foundation for Cooperative Housing with USAID funds.
Work includes administration offices with office space for doctors
and upgrades for the antiquated
record system. It will also contain an X-ray wing and a new dispensary where medicine for the region will be warehoused and then taken by mobile clinics to rural areas as well as urban places such as Gonaives.
Each month, doctors at St. Nicholas see 4,000 patients, deliver 350 babies, and treat 150 road accidents, Virtilus said. With a new emergency room as well as a new X-ray wing, victims will no longer have to be transported to Port-au-Prince on rough roads to get X-rays.
USAID contributed $500,000 to the reconstruction of St. Nicholas, one of many programs that help provide basic health care for 4.8 million Haitians—nearly half the country’s population. Services include vaccinations for 60,000 children and delivery of reproductive health care to more than 200,000 Haitian mothers.
The need to refurbish the emergency ward at St. Nicholas was apparent during a recent visit. A patient, intravenous drip attached, was being lowered by gurney from the back of an ambulance and rushed to a waiting
physician. Patients recovering from surgery lay in an antechamber
for administrative offices. The pediatric overflow found mothers and children waiting where benches could be found.
They were normal scenes for Virtilus, whose challenges at St. Nicholas are as much administrative
as medical.
“Now you know why I am turning gray,” said the youthful 44-year-old, drawing attention to his hair, speckled with
white.
★ —J.W.
FrontLines is published
by the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development
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