A COVID-19 Update From MAEC

To All Our Supporters,

We hope you, your friends, and your families are well and keeping safe and healthy. Please know we are keeping you all in our thoughts and know that together, as a global community, we will get through this global pandemic!

We are grateful for your support and wanted to take this opportunity to check in with all of you and provide an update from Maison L'Arc-en-Ciel. The income-generating agriculture projects are continuing forward with caution, as the daily struggles of those we serve that we hope to help solve have not been halted by this outbreak.

Please find this update below from Maison L'Arc-en-Ciel founder and director, Danielle Penette:

"For the last 3 weeks, we have been in action/reaction mode to plan for the arrival of the coronavirus, which is expected to hit the country (Haiti) severely due to the crowded living conditions of the vast majority of the population, as well as to the unable to reach remote areas of the country for community awareness. Internally, we have begun activities such as raising awareness of the modes of transmission, sharing precautions with the whole group and then by small groups (children, reintegrated young, nurses and all the staff) search for medicines and purchase of additional sanitary products, water trucks, propane gas reserve, diesel tank, etc.

We had a first response plan three weeks. and since last Friday we went to level 2, meaning

confinements inside the house, the non-access of certain spaces, the stopping of employees and some reintegrated in order to minimize the entry and exit of people which would make control by the nurses much too difficult. We have limited the transport by our driver to housemothers and washerwomen as well as gardeners because we must continue these activities to have some food within 2 months. We have to pick up all staff in order to prevent them from being contaminated by van or motorbike, and we have begun the fitting out of the large multi-functional room for children in the consultation and quarantine area, if we should have one or more infected child\adult, knowing that there will be no possibility for their hospitalization. We check the temperature of everyone who enters.

We have the impression of reliving the beginnings of MAEC. Our doctor had to leave Haiti just before the borders closed. She referred us to a colleague, luckily there is the application WhatsApp that we can use to communicate. We are concerned because the risk of transmission is very, very high and health authorities do not have the material and human resources to deal with the spread that we see elsewhere in the world."

Please do keep the people of Haiti in your thoughts during this difficult time, as the impact of COVID-19 will be vast and severe, but the resilience of the Haitian people will see them through this outbreak.