A Legacy of COVID-19 Relief: From Boston Hope, to Peru, to Haiti
Recovery beds that housed COVID-patients at the Boston Hope Medical Center one year ago continue to benefit patients still suffering from the pandemic in Peru, Haiti, and beyond.
In April 2020, to address rising COVID-19 cases in Boston, the Boston Hope Medical Center was quickly constructed within the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. One of Massachusetts’ most powerful tools in slowing the spread of COVID-19, the 1,000 bed facility was designed to serve and isolate post-acute COVID-19 patients, including homeless patients, in the Boston area.
From April to June, over 700 COVID-19 patients were treated at Boston Hope. As the curve began to flatten across the state and beds were opening up, Mass General Brigham, who was leading the effort for Boston Hope along with the City of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, looked to how these beds could continue to provide relief for COVID patients. That’s when they turned to Build Health International.
A Beverly, MA based non-profit, Build Health International (BHI) works closely with governments, NGO partners, and local workforces to address critical gaps in healthcare access through the design and construction of high-quality healthcare infrastructure in resource-constrained countries. When COVID cases started rising in early 2020, BHI was on the forefront of providing COVID-19 infrastructure, in countries such as Haiti, Lesotho, and Peru.
On June 2nd, 2020 when the last 2 patients were discharged from Boston Hope, Peru was also experiencing its single highest day of cases to date. These rates would only rise over the summer, as in August Peru was facing an average of 8,000 new cases a day, the highest rate per capita of any country at the time.
With surging caseloads, Peru was also experiencing drastic oxygen shortages. In response to these shortages, BHI and Socios En Salud, the Latin American branch of Boston-based Partners In Health, began working with the Peruvian Ministry of Health to expand oxygen access and COVID-19 treatment facilities.
One of the main actions of this response effort was opening the Centro de Atención Temporal de Oxigenación (CATO) in Lima, Peru, a medical oxygen treatment center for patients suffering from COVID-19. To make CATO a reality, patient beds were needed. Once again, the beds that treated patients at Boston Hope were employed to serve patients in Peru. With more than 50 beds donated from Boston Hope, CATO is now the largest oxygen facility of its kind in Peru and is still serving many patients on a daily basis.
The legacy of Boston Hope doesn’t end there. To date, 360 Boston Hope beds have been sent from BHI’s warehouse in Beverly to Peru, where they’ve been distributed by Socios En Salud and The Peruvian Ministry of Health. An additional 246 beds headed to Haiti, where they were allocated to St. Luke’s Hospital and St. Damien’s Hospital by the organization Direct Relief.
Additional supplies from Boston Hope, such as overbed tables, lockers, and cabinets, will eventually find a home at the Maternal Center of Excellence (MCoE) in Sierra Leone, a Partners In Health a 10-building, state-of-the-art referral and teaching hospital for mothers and children that broke ground in April 2021. In Sierra Leone, where 1 in 20 women run the risk of dying from pregnancy or childbirth related causes, the MCoE will aim to drastically improve maternal health outcomes — and the equipment donated from Boston Hope will enable hundreds of women to seek care each day.
As Boston begins to see a light at the end of the tunnel for COVID-19, with Massachusetts on track to reach their goal of vaccinating 4.1 million individuals this week, case counts in Peru and Haiti remain high. This week, the Peruvian government revised the way in which they were counting COVID-19-related deaths. With this revision, Peru now holds the world’s worst death rate from COVID-19 of any country, as the country’s recorded death toll for the period of March 1, 2020 to May 22nd, 2021 more than doubled — from 67,807 to 180,764.
In Haiti, after a year of relatively low case counts, a spike in cases last week led the country to declare a “state of emergency” accompanied by an 8-day nightly curfew. On the anniversary of Boston Hope’s closing, the lasting and urgent need for beds in Peru and Haiti serves as a poignant reminder that the pandemic won’t be over until it is over everywhere.
Olivia Duggan is Build Health International’s Communication Manager. She writes about the intersections of health and infrastructure, with a focus on the impact of BHI’s work on fragile health systems.
