Haiti (MNN) — An estimated seven million people in Haiti are without electricity. Only around 40 percent of the Haitian population has consistent power access. Some people can get by with intermittent power from generators or small-scale power charging stations.
When no power sources are available, candles, lanterns, and fires become essential for lighting and cooking in Haitian homes.
While this solves one problem, it creates another.
(Photo courtesy of For Haiti With Love)
Eva DeHart with For Haiti With Love says, “Their cooking is usually outside on the ground with wood charcoal. Anytime you have open flame — and especially open flame low — it just lends itself to accidents.
“Children running and playing end up tumbling into the hot boiling water or into the burning charcoal. [Or they are] so hungry that they pull the food off of the table before it started to cool and they end up with food burning them all over.”
For Haiti With Love runs a burn clinic in Haiti to provide free medical care for these accidents. DeHart says, “We are there because of God, and God’s people in the United States provide the medicine and the bandages to make this all possible.”
God’s love comes out in everything they do at the burn clinic — from dressing a child’s burn wounds and encouraging distraught caregivers, to follow-up treatments and conversations.
Going into the New Year, For Haiti With Love needs your support to keep their burn clinic running and well-stocked. Burn incidents in Haiti often require extra bandanging and supplies to keep wounds clean since the home environment isn’t always conducive to this.
Click here to make a year-end gift to For Haiti With Love.
(Photo courtesy of For Haiti With Love)
DeHart also requests your prayers. Ask the Lord to bless those who walk through the burn clinic’s doors with His healing and spiritual hope.
For the believers working in the burn clinic, DeHart says, “There are odors to burned flesh, and they deal with that. They deal with the blood and the discomfort of debriding wounds. They deal with absolutely painful cries from the little ones and even the adults sometimes because burns are so painful.
“[Pray] for their courage and their endurance of everything that they see, patient after patient,” DeHart asks. And pray also for “their patience in order to be more understanding to each one that comes across their table, that they’re not just another face, but they are another one of God’s creation that needs our help.”
Header photo courtesy of For Haiti With Love.
