BHI was recognized as the recipient of the ‘Better World Award’ as part of the 2020 AEC Excellence Awards for our design of the Saint Rock Hospital in Oeust, Haiti. Read the full award announcement here.
As this year’s recipient of the Better World award for the AEC Excellence Awards 2020, Build Health International truly embodies what it means to build a better world with the Saint Rock Hospital project in rural Haiti.
Responding to the region’s urgent need for expanded health services, this new 13,600-square-foot nonprofit health facility will include emergency and maternal health services, as well as expanded facilities for in-and out-patient care, mental health counseling, dental care, HIV treatment, and volunteer accommodations.
Challenge
Non-profit and Autodesk Foundation customer Build Health International (BHI) believes that every person has the right to dignified healthcare and recognizes that inadequate infrastructure often stands in the way of high-quality care. BHI is taking on this challenge by collaborating with frontline healthcare nonprofits to deliver the medical structures critically needed in many low resource areas around the world.
Take, for example, their current project for the Saint Rock Haiti Foundation – Saint Rock Hospital in the Carrefour commune of Ouest, Haiti. Even though the community is located just 10 miles from Port-au-Prince, it can take villagers more than two hours to reach medical care due to its mountainous location and treacherous, unpaved roads. In addition, many services—especially maternal care—are either nonexistent, unreliable, or cost-prohibitive in the region.
The current, three-room primary clinic in the area has seen patient numbers rise from 100 in 2002 to more than 50,000 today. Those seeking care may arrive before sunrise and wait all day to be seen. And Haiti’s maternal mortality rate is the highest in the Western hemisphere.
In order to increase the capacity of the clinic, expand services, and solve limitations such as its energy supply, BHI partnered with Saint Rock Haiti Foundation to construct a new 13,600-square-foot primary care hospital down the road from the current clinic. Not only that, it all must be done with a very limited budget and a site located—quite literally—on the side of a mountain.
Collaboration is at the core of all of our work. With a heavy reliance on the AEC Collection, the Saint Rock Hospital project demonstrates how healthcare infrastructure transformation can become a reality under even highly challenging logistical, geographic, and budgetary conditions.
—Allison Denisky, Sr. Architectural Designer, Build Health International
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