RIP Moiz, October 2016

It is with a heavy heart that we write this week’s update. Moiz, a teacher at the JRF for the last two years, leader of our community and all around good man, died Wednesday at the age of 46.

We do not know what killed Moiz, as the healthcare down here is atrocious and poor Haitians do not warrant autopsies. Since we’ve known him he’s had health problems, and since July he had  been sick, on and off, taking time off from work. On Friday October 7th, he decided he felt ill enough to check himself into the Jacmel hospital. They told him he needed four pints of blood. Catherine and I went to the hospital to give blood and asked the doctors there what was wrong with Moiz. All they could tell us was that he had “anemia” which is a symptom of whatever the real issue was, not the cause. It was clear this doctor didn’t know what was going on, but it was relatively late at night and I hoped that his real doctor would be in the next day. This was horribly naïve, maybe outright negligent. He got the blood he needed, but the Jacmel hospital did almost nothing else for him. On Thursday, October 13th, he checked himself out of the hospital and told us that he was afraid for his life, because the doctors had been so negligent. He decided to go to a hospital in Port au Prince the next day. It had been recommended by a man in our community who said it was good and staffed with American trained doctors and not too expensive. Moiz arrived there on Friday, but Monday was a national holiday, so apparently no real testing or diagnosis was started on him until Tuesday. We didn’t learn this information until after he died. Moiz laid in his hospital bed for three days, in pain, without any knowledge of what was wrong with him, without any real care and with the knowledge that he was dying. By Tuesday, when he was finally seen by a doctor and had some testing done, he could not speak or eat. He would look at his wife and family and just cry, as he clearly knew he was on death’s doorstep and would not be there for them. On Wednesday evening, he died, still undiagnosed.

Moiz was a truly good man. He was kind, humble, always smiling, had a great attitude, was appreciative of what the JRF had done for him, helped his neighbors, was a leader in the community, a great father and a great husband. It is worth noting that Moiz was the only member of the community that was unanimously elected to our community committee. He and his wife had three children in their home, a 17 year old girl, a 9 year old niece, and an infant, all of whom had been taken in and adopted by Moiz and his wife. Moiz’s death was brought on by the negligence, ignorance and apathy of the Jacmel and Port au Prince medical staff. Unfortunately, suing for medical malpractice is not a thing here, so their actions will have no negative consequences for them. We know that these doctors were not unique in their behavior, this is a country-wide, systemic issue.

We can’t help but feel that we failed Moiz, along with these professionals. We were not even aware of the fact that he wasn’t being seen by doctors in Port Au Prince over the weekend, did not take his dying claim seriously enough, or research the PAP hospitals as we should have. Instead, we trusted people who we should have known were not to be trusted. We knew that if he needed blood he must have had some internal bleeding or serious issue, but did not press hard enough to learn what it was. I can’t stress how horrid it is to live in a place where you can’t trust the doctors. Medical stuff gets so pricey so quickly and knowing when someone needs the best care in an expensive, private hospital versus when someone just has some standard illness and will get better with basic care is such a hard call, and the consequences of making the wrong move are catastrophic. In this case we made the wrong decision, didn’t appreciate the seriousness of what was happening and a man died, not because of those actions but those actions did play a part. Maybe he had cancer or another terminal illness, and it wouldn’t have mattered, but maybe he had something treatable and it would have mattered. We will never know.

When horrible things like this happen we try to find the positive. In this case that is difficult, to say the least. We certainly learned something about the Jacmel hospital and hospitals in Port Au Prince. Moiz paid the ultimate price to teach us this lesson, as bad a deal of which we’ve ever been a part. One thing we, as Americans, can take from this tragedy is just how fortunate we are to have the medical system we do. Lord knows it has its problems, but in America you know that your doctor is at least knowledgeable about medicine and probably cares about the patients under their care. In the third world, your doctor might be a highly trained professional who truly cares about doing a good job, or they could be an ignorant, poorly trained, wretched human who only cares about their pay check.

Moiz with his foot pedal sewing machine, displaying an apron he made for Catherine’s grandmother. When we first arrived to Jacmel we didn’t have electricity for a month or so, and Moiz stitched all of the JRF children’s school uniforms on his foot pedal powered sewing machine.

We will be paying for Moiz’s funeral with JRF funds. Moiz is owed a severance, but this severance is not enough to pay the money we loaned for medical costs + his funeral. That being said, his wife just lost her husband, has three kids to take care of, and we are not about to saddle her with a debt that will necessitate her paying 25% of her paycheck every month for the next two years in order to pay off.  As always, thank you all for your continued support, together we are making a real difference.