Reflecting on More Than a Decade Working on Health Infrastructure in Haiti
Omar Hernandez, BHI’s Senior Director of Engineering and Construction, never intended to devote his career to building sustainable healthcare infrastructure in low-resource settings. Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake that all changed.
On August 14, 2021 a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti’s Southern Peninsula, damaging much of the region’s healthcare infrastructure. As patients began seeking treatment for injuries, the Build Health International (BHI) team mobilized. Our team in Haiti, of architects, engineers and construction specialists with support from our Boston office, quickly began to conduct structural assessments, ensuring that hospitals, clinics, schools, churches, orphanages, and public spaces were safe to provide immediate treatment and care. Despite the immense challenges the earthquake presented following an already tumultuous year, BHI was ready. We had been here before.
When I began my professional engineering career, I never expected this is where the work would lead, and today, I cannot imagine using my experience and credentials in any other way.
The devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti nearly a decade ago in 2010 fundamentally altered my path. Centered near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, that earthquake killed hundreds of thousands, displaced more than a million, and caused as much as $14 billion in damage. As a young engineer, I felt called to take leave from my current work on hotels and residential towers in the Dominican Republic and travel to neighboring Haiti to support recovery and rebuilding efforts. The firsthand encounter with the destruction wrought by the earthquake, thousands suffering and dying for lack of access to basic care, fragility of Haiti’s infrastructure — particularly its health infrastructure — all compounded the disaster’s horrifying impact.
The experience compelled me to refocus my work on strengthening local infrastructure and expanding access to critical health systems. For the next three years, I worked as the head engineer with the team at Partners in Health, scores of Haitian staff, international partners, and the volunteers who would later become Build Health International to design and build the Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais (HUM). A 182,000 square foot, 320 bed teaching hospital, HUM was the first healthcare facility of its kind in Haiti. In the years since, HUM has remained Haiti’s largest and most advanced public sector hospital, providing care for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and training hundreds of local doctors, nurses, and staff who are now working throughout Haiti.
Just as it was formative for me, the construction of HUM was foundational to Build Health International, where I’ve served as the Director of Engineering for the past 5 years leading the design and construction of projects in Haiti, Peru, Malawi, and around the world. BHI was formally co-founded in 2014 by Dr. David Walton, a global health physician, and Jim Ansara, the founder and former CEO of Shawmut Design and Construction. David and Jim were on the ground in Haiti in 2010, working alongside the Partners in Health team to aid in the recovery from the earthquake and construction of HUM. Like me, they saw the dire need and potential created by strong health infrastructure, a powerful tool to dramatically improve people’s lives.
HUM was our first experience designing and constructing medical infrastructure on that scale in an unfamiliar context. It provided countless lessons learned, mistakes, and growth opportunities — illuminating the challenges of building in deeply resource-constrained settings. It taught me best practices about adapting to local conditions, and ultimately showed me the immense, life changing impact of access to safe, high-quality health infrastructure.
Since 2010, BHI has since grown to work in over 28 countries and completed 200+ health infrastructure projects. Our team of architects, engineers, and specialists is larger and the network of BHI’s global health partners has expanded, but our mission and commitment to provide access to safe, high-quality healthcare has remained the same. The response to this year’s earthquake underscored the importance of infrastructure and BHI’s critical impact in both immediate crisis and long-term sustainability.
Like in 2010, the 2021 earthquake killed thousands and led to widespread damage. But this time, those who were critically injured and seeking care could find it at HUM, St. Boniface Hospital, and other facilities built and expanded by BHI and our partners that did not exist in 2010. In fact, of all the projects BHI has worked on in Haiti, none sustained major damage in the recent earthquake because they were built on lessons from the past, specifically designed to be earthquake resistant.
Along with more resilient physical infrastructure, a strong network of Haitian staff, medical professionals, and international partners — which grew largely out of the experience of the 2010 earthquake — came together to move supplies and personnel to areas most impacted and provide life-saving care more quickly and efficiently than in 2010.
Haiti still faces enormous challenges and our work is far from over, but as I reflect on the past six months, marked by crisis and unprecedented upheaval, I’m profoundly encouraged by the progress that has been made in the decade since I first arrived on-site in Haiti. I’ve seen what’s possible when we design and build infrastructure with a deep understanding of local conditions and a commitment to safety, quality, and sustainability. These possibilities fuel my enduring commitment to continue the work of strengthening health infrastructure in Haiti and in countries around the world where it is urgently needed.
Omar Hernandez is a Registered Professional Structural Engineer, and the Senior Director of Engineering and Construction at Build Health International. He has spent 14 years leading engineering and construction projects in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and other countries around the world. Omar graduated from Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre Y Maestra in Santiago, Dominican Republic with a degree in Civil & Environmental Engineering and completed a Masters in Structural Engineering and Seismic Design.
Learn More about Build Health International’s 2021 earthquake response.
