Suffering in Haiti brought home to Stonington

Stonington - In 34 seconds, everything changed.

"In the time it takes for me to read this paragraph, children in classrooms, worshippers in their churches, businessmen in their stalls - 250,000 of them: rich and poor, illiterate and learned - were crushed by an avalanche of concrete," said Dr. Jeremiah Lowney, who runs the Norwich-based Haitian Health Foundation.

The Haitian Health Foundation was treating more than 100,000 people a year before the earthquake. Now, six months after a massive earthquake ravaged the country, there are few signs the humanitarian disaster is ending, according to Lowney.

On Sunday, Lowney spoke at the Road Church in Stonington about the organization's work, which is focused in the city of Jérémie, located in western Haiti. He also asked for donations to help his organization continue its work.

The nonprofit group operated on a budget of about $3 million a year before the earthquake, and has seen demand and costs skyrocket since then.

In the six months since the earthquake, which occurred on Jan. 12, about 120,000 refugees have left the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and settled in Jérémie and its surrounding villages.

But unlike in the capital and other parts of the country, no tent city has emerged in Jérémie. Instead, families have taken refugees into their homes, sleeping in shifts and sharing food. Many are reliant on aid from groups like the Haitian Health Foundation, which has 175 full-time employees in the area.

"Every one of them was taken in by a family," Lowney said. "Isn't that Christian love? ... The story of the Good Samaritan was there."

Lowney first traveled to Haiti in 1982, as part of a group of doctors providing medical care. A orthodontist, Lowney spent that first week removing hundreds of painful, infected teeth from the mouths of Haitians who had never seen a dentist before.

Since then, he has returned to Haiti every three months. With his wife, Lowney built a hospital in Jérémie with more than $1 million in private funds. It eventually grew to a network of clinics and sites that tends to Haitians, especially pregnant women, their newborn infants, and malnourished children. Lowney said it was Mother Theresa who, in a telephone conversation, said he should focus his attention on the poor city of Jérémie.

"This all started with a small group of people trying to take teeth out," Lowney said, "and look what God has done. Look what God is trying to do."

The group now tends to an additional 100,000 people affected by the earthquake, Lowney said. The foundation's work is even harder because of the level of desperation and destitution that existed even before the earthquake struck.

"It's a place where children are dying, as I stand here," Lowney said. "They're dying of malnutrition. This has to be considered a tragedy. One hour from the wealthiest nation, people are starving."

Lowney's message clearly affected the churchgoers, many whose eyes welled up with tears during his talk. The service's readings - the Beatitudes from the Gospel of Matthew - reflected a similar theme, calling for service toward the poor and weak.

"We talk about devastation all the time," said Craig Haines of Stonington, who introduced Lowney. "Eighteen hundred lives were lost in Katrina. We talk about the World Trade Center bombing, where 3,000 people lost their lives. But how do you talk about a disaster where a quarter of a million people lost their lives?

Haines spoke of feeling helpless after the January earthquake, but said he was moved after a visit to the Haitian Health Foundation's headquarters in Norwich.

"Dr. Lowney, and the work of his foundation, is the personification of faith, hope and, above all, charity," he said.