Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Repeatedly repressed for decades by unstable and ineffective governments and deepening environmental and ecologic predicaments, Haiti’s people are unable to free themselves from grinding poverty. Nowhere is the people’s distress more urgent than in the rural regions of the country, where a major symptom of their poverty is illness, infant mortality, malnutrition, and inadequate healthcare. The average lifespan in rural Haiti is 54. Half of the children die before their fifth birthday. Clinics and hospitals, particularly in the countryside, are scattered and poorly-supplied.

Covenant Hospital, located in the small town of Mombin Crochu in the mountainous northeastern part of Haiti, was established to serve the health needs of the region’s 40,000 people in the name of Jesus Christ. From its start as a dispensary, the hospital now struggles to form a system of primary healthcare, health education, and preventive medicine for those who live in the scattered farming neighborhoods of this isolated region.

Poverty, illness, and death go hand-in-hand for the people of rural Haiti.

Their health needs are urgent.

The presence of Covenant Hospital is a beacon of health and hope in their darkness.