Housing Works: Housing Prevents AIDS. Housing Improves Health.

In the wake of Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Housing Works announced today that it will collaborate with PHAP+, a Haitian coalition of PWA-led organizations, to provide desperately needed medical services and supplies to Haitians living with HIVAIDS.

Housing Works President and CEO Charles King urged people to contribute cash donations to Housing Works’ efforts in the region through www.housingworks.org.

“If we have learned anything from past disasters, including Hurricane Katrina right here in the U.S., marginalized communities, especially poor people with AIDS, end up being further marginalized by relief efforts that don’t take them into account. Housing Works has committed its relief efforts to giving PWA-led organizations life-saving materials and supplies that they can distribute to the people they serve,” King said, adding, “I urge you to show your compassion and support for our friends and colleagues in Haiti by donating to our relief fund for Haitian AIDS groups. Your commitment in the form of a cash donation is the best and most efficient way to help.”

PHAP+ is establishing a safe refuge for Haitians living with HIV/AIDS in St. Marc, a city north of Port-au-Prince and outside of the earthquake zone. The refuge will include a staging area for processing donated supplies and providing medical treatment, as well as a tent city for displaced people. On Friday January 15, King and Dr. Vaty Poitevien, the Haitian medical director of one of Housing Works’ clinics, will travel to St.-Marc to deliver the first shipment of thousands of dollars worth of HIV medications and other urgently needed medicines and supplies, such as tents, first aid kits and blankets.

Housing Works is close collaborators with the Haitian AIDS group Fondation Esther B. Stanislas (FEBS), which is located in St.-Marc. FEBS founder Esther Boucicault is Haiti’s best-known AIDS activist and the president of PHAP+. After the earthquake that devastated Haiti, Housing Works received a desperate e-mail message from FEBS contact Edner Boucicaut (no relation) that read, “Please do whatever you can to provide some help down here. Clothes, food, medications. We are in need. Please! Please! We’re dying!” Later Boucicault would email, “We need some doctors badly!!! First aid kits, food! Please bring tents.” Housing Works staffers began to mobilize immediately.

Haiti has the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the Western hemisphere. Approximately two percent of Haitians are living with HIV/AIDS.

ABOUT HOUSING WORKS
Housing Works is the nation’s largest community-based AIDS organization and the nation’s largest minority-controlled AIDS organization. Since 1990, Housing Works has provided a comprehensive array of lifesaving services, such as housing, medical and dental care, meals, case management, counseling and job training, to more than 20,000 homeless or low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS. For more information, visit www.HousingWorks.org.