Horns Up for Haiti
By Suzanne Werre
Editor
With the season of giving upon us, Underwood High School alum Anne Hefta recently gave the best thing she could give to the people of Haiti. She gave her time and talents as a nurse with Hands Up for Haiti.
Anne, who graduates with her nursing degree from NDSU this Friday, was joined by 11 of her classmates for a two-week practicum in Haiti. (It’s normally called Hands Up for Haiti, since those 12 are NDSU students, they call it Horns Up for Haiti.)
The healthcare system in Haiti is vastly different than what we take for granted here in the United States. We may complain when we have to wait an hour at the clinic for a doctor when we have an appointment, but in Haiti, there aren’t even clinics – at least not many of them.
“They don’t have everyday clinics like we do,” said Anne. “We focused on a lot of outreach clinics so we could get to the ones that don’t have any type of healthcare within walking distance.”
Yes, walking distance. Most of the patients that came to the outreach clinics, typically between 80-100 a day, walked to the clinic. Others used Mopeds, she noted, but there weren’t a lot of SUVs and minivans driving up to the outreach clinics in the Northern Haiti city of Cap-Haitien.
The nursing students received training and got a lot of experience in a variety of nursing specialties while at NDSU, noted Anne, who will be working in the neonatal unit at Sanford in Fargo after graduation and passing her boards.
