Haiti Solidarity Interview: MILDRED ARISTIDE, FORMER FIRST LADY OF HAITI (April 2015)
Let me start with some
background. Titide [nickname for Aristide] created the Aristide Foundation University
(UNIFA) in 2001. It was an extension of the Haiti-Cuba cooperation in
health care. Instead of sending Haitian students to med school in Cuba we
would train more doctors and health professionals in the country. We
broke ground on the campus in 2002. By 2003 the first phase of
construction was completed; approximately 247 medical students began classes.
Early February 2004, the university teaching hospital, Hopital
Universitaire de la Paix, opened. Then there was the coup d’etat.
While Titide and I were forced from our home and the country, UNIFA students
were forced from the campus. University classrooms and dorm rooms were
transformed into military barracks by soldiers of the multi-national force
deployed to Haiti. Remarkably, most of the students made their way to
Cuba and completed their training. When the earthquake struck on January
12, 2010, some of these young doctors staffed emergency clinics at the
Foundation auditorium; two are part of our staff at UNIFA.
In the month before we returned to
Haiti, Titide [former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide] wrote: “A year on [from the earthquake], young people
and students look to the Foundation’s University to return to its educational
vocation and help fill the gaping national hole left on the day the earth shook
in Haiti … I will return to Haiti to the field I know best and love:
education.”
Education has always been at the center of his life work – as teacher/priest, creating Lafanmi Selavi (center for street children), his writings, social justice activism, tenure as Haiti’s first democratically elected president, his scholarship in South Africa. And today, he brings all of that to UNIFA.
Education has always been at the center of his life work – as teacher/priest, creating Lafanmi Selavi (center for street children), his writings, social justice activism, tenure as Haiti’s first democratically elected president, his scholarship in South Africa. And today, he brings all of that to UNIFA.
http://haitianalysis.blogspot.com/2015/04/haiti-solidarity-interview-mildred.html
History
Beginning in the
late 1990’s Cuba began to send doctors to Haiti, and opened its medical schools
to Haitian students. In 2001, the Aristide Foundation for Democracy took this
cooperation one step further by opening a medical school where medical
professors from Cuba and elsewhere trained Haitian doctors in Haiti. Unlike
other medical schools in Haiti, this one recruited medical students from poor
families. Talented young people from rural Haiti had previously found it nearly
impossible to attend medical school.
By 2004, 247 future
doctors were studying medicine at UNIFA and a School of Nursing was scheduled
to open in the fall of 2004. The 2004 coup d’état brought this progress to a
halt. UNIFA faculty went into exile or hiding, students were forced off the
campus, and UNIFA was closed. Despite this hardship, nearly all of UNIFA’s
students were able to complete their medical studies in Cuba. Today they make
up a significant portion of Haiti’s next generation of doctors – many worked
tirelessly assisting victims after the earthquake.
A Year of
Rebirth
The reopening of
the Medical School at UNIFA took place against a backdrop of a still shattered
Haiti—over 80% of higher education institutions were destroyed or damaged by
the 2010 earthquake. Some argued that reopen- ing was premature, but on the
other side was the fierce desire of young people to begin now. The earthquake
interrupted or ended thousands of students’ educations. Young people looked
around their ruined city and saw few signs of reconstruction. UNIFA’s buildings
were still standing. How could UNIFA say once again:
Wait until next
year? Certainly, Haiti cannot wait for more doctors.
Haiti’s population is
growing, the country is facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world, and
health inequities continue to widen.
On his return to
Haiti in March 2011, after seven years of exile in
South Africa,
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide promised to dedicate himself to
education and reopen UNIFA, the University established by his Foundation in 2001. On
September 26, 2011 the Medical School of UNIFA reopened its doors, welcoming an
outstanding new class of 63 men and 63 women chosen from a pool of over 1,000
applicants.
UNIFA Academic Year 2015-2016, Aristide Foundation for Democracy website (2016)
UNIFA Université Fondation Dr Aristide UNIFA – Vizit, Tele Ginen (2014)
UNIFA, Four Years of Growth, Aristide Foundation for Democracy website (2014)
UNIFA Opens a School of Nursing in Its Second Year, Aristide Foundation for Democracy website (2013)
UNIFA Medical School Enters its Second Semester, Aristide Foundation for Democracy website (2012)
UNIFA MEDICAL SCHOOL REOPENS (in September 26, 2011), Aristide Foundation for Democracy website (2012)