GLI Dominican Republic improves access to quality health for more than 20,000 people
- The project to refurbish the clinical analysis laboratory of the Leopoldo Martínez Hospital, together with Save the Children, is completed.
In November 2022, Probitas Foundation completed the refurbishment project of the Leopoldo Martínez Hospital, in the province of Hato Mayor in the Dominican Republic, promoted together with Save the Children as part of our Global Laboratory Initiative (GLI) program. With an investment of € 200,000, we were able to refurbish the infrastructure and provide it with new equipment and laboratory material, as well as training local talent for the proper operation of the equipment. In this way, in line with GLI’s objective, we have improved access to quality health care for more than 20,000 people from isolated and remote populations.
The project, launched in late 2020, faced numerous difficulties due to the constraints of the State of Emergency declared in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, both entities worked together with staff and local authorities to find new ways of collaborating to advance the implementation of improvements, leaving actions aimed at boosting community awareness as a last step.
Mercè Bosch, GLI program manager at Probitas Foundation, assures that "we have achieved all the expected objectives, even exceeding the number of samples treated by the laboratory. This means a considerable improvement in the quality of life and health of the indigenous communities in the area."
Hato Mayor's health area management team emphasizes that "it has been gratifying to see how the population has responded to the collection of samples. Thanks to this initiative, our patients from distant places and with scarce resources do not have to come to the main municipality to take their laboratory samples and then to look for the results”.