Judline is a young infectious disease nurse. She works as a community officer at the office of the United Nations Population Fund in Haiti.
Alongside the national sexual health coordinator, she carries out monitoring work in the field. She ensures the follow-up in the process of care and support for groups of pregnant women displaced from working-class neighborhoods in public places.
Provide support
My work allows me to meet vulnerable people and support them. I feel useful in my interventions. I educate people, especially women, about family planning, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), sex education, and breastfeeding. My work fascinates me. However, the current context makes my intervention a little difficult.
Save a life
During the country's lockdown, when the streets were barricaded, we repeatedly went to the rescue of women about to give birth in public places. We intervened insistently with the Hôpital Universitaire la Paix while the administrative procedures continued.
Diligently, we enabled several women to give birth safely and anticipate complications. Every day spent in the emergency room was exhausting. However, you always end up feeling like you saved a life and helped a woman or girl smile again.
A determined team
Judline is not alone. She is part of a team of field officers working to strengthen the availability of responses to the situations of women and girls, especially those internally displaced due to insecurity.
These young people are part of the second cohort of UNFPA's affirmative internship program in Haiti. They are deployed as community workers in emergency situations in areas affected by conflict between armed gangs. They have been supporting the existing programs of the humanitarian team for several months, covering coordination, prevention, and response activities to gender-based violence as well as sexual and reproductive health.
The pleasure of helping
Despite the difficulties encountered in the field, I took pleasure in accompanying these pregnant women. Because I saw in her a younger sister, a friend, says Jensen, community officer and young graduate in Legal Sciences.
The situation of these young girls worries me. They live in very precarious conditions. In my role as a community officer, I was delighted when Linda after her delivery came back to us to show us her gratitude for the reassuring presence we had offered her.
Jose admits that they will last a long time because the situation is not stable. "We will do with the means that we will consider".
A continuity of actions
Renald, a sociologist active in the dynamics for the respect of the dignity of people in Haiti, underlined, following his last visit to the camp, that the situation of the displaced persons of Cité Soleil in public places requires a continuity of urgent actions. He stressed that the living conditions of the tenants of the place are threatened by the level of insalubrity. People survive.
Community officers continually receive complaints from displaced people who shout “hello” to them, we need help, and we are dying in the streets. These officers are determined to continue their humanitarian work for the benefit of these displaced people. (jlg, vs)
Text: Jhunie Laura Ganème, revised by Vario Sérant
