On Monday, a delegation of the European Investment Bank (EIB) led by Vice-President Pim van Ballekom visited an EIB-funded hospital during a tour aimed at exploring project opportunities in Haiti.
Nap Kenbe (“We’re Staying Well” in creole) is a modular trauma surgery hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières that was built after the 2010 earthquake in Tabarre. The EIB supported this initiative with a EUR 600 000 grant, to which was added a EUR 51,357 donation from EIB Group staff.
“Infrastructure development is a top priority for the EIB. The Tabarre hospital is an example of the type of partnership that we can form to meet local needs. While Haiti still has to face the consequences of the earthquake, the EIB remains determined to seek new opportunities to support the country’s efforts to rebuild”, said Pim van Ballekom, who is responsible among other things for the EIB’s lending in the Caribbean.
The EIB funded construction of part of the hospital facilities corresponding to approximately two wards and an average of 16 hospital beds constantly occupied for the past five years. The EIB aid has had a real impact on patients and also paid for an ambulance.
“Seven years after the earthquake, healthcare services still remain too limited in Haiti. The Tabarre hospital envisaged performing 150 operations a month, but now up to 700 a month are being carried out in our four theatres. What is more, facilities alone are not enough. They also have to be filled with medical equipment and staff. As far as consultants are concerned, this remains a major challenge for the country. This is why with our team of 18 Haitian and three foreign surgeons, MSF has also been helping to train 16 resident surgeons a year since 2015 and is soon intending to extend this local skills improvement approach to other profiles” said MSF Head of Mission Sebastien Libert.
Built in prefabricated containers, the hospital provides free health services to the inhabitants of Port-au-Prince (i.e. more than 2,700,000 people) and carries out around 680 operations a month.
The EIB has also supported development and economic activity in the Caribbean with loans and equity investments worth EUR 1.7 billion. In Haiti, it has pumped a total of EUR 16 million into private sector SMEs through four projects.
