In the middle of this summer, Maxime Jerdens took his seat at his new examination room at the Lespwa Timoun clinic. It was his first day. He prepared for his patients to arrive, looking through their charts and thinking through their treatment. It had been a difficult road to get to this moment.
The clinic decided to expand their physician corps because month after month, the flow of patients has increased throughout 2024. After a large dip in the beginning of the year with political violence associated with the deposition of the president, residents increasingly had been turning to the clinic for care.
With more than twice as many patients coming through the clinic doors compared to early this year, expansion was a necessity. Jerdens was the natural addition.
Maxime Jerdens was born on the little island of La Gonâve off the coast of Haiti. In his town malnutrition, pneumonia and diarrhea took the lives of far too many children. Fortunately, he grew up close to where Carmel and Pere Val (the founders of the Lespwa Timoun clinic) were stationed for the Episcopal church.
As Carmel and Pere Val began their community work and built their first schools and clinics, they invited American doctors to come and treat their community.
Jerdens’s mother worked as the cook for the doctors when they were in town. He lingered around the clinic and became acquainted with the physicians. As he saw the health struggles of his hometown and the impact of medicine, he vowed to become a doctor to help others.
As he finished primary and secondary school, Carmel and Pere Val moved to the mainland to start the current Lespwa Timoun clinic, but Jerdens remained in contact with them and the doctors. He retained his dream. After school, Light from Light supporters paid his tuition for medical school.
After his long and arduous road, Jerdens finally took a position as a general physician at the Lespwa Timoun clinic. He is now in a position to do for his community what was previously done by foreign physicians.
Jerdens’s story is why so many support the Lespwa Timoun clinic. Its roots in Haitian society stretch back decades. The patients they treated as children have become the doctors and nurses that serve in the clinic now. This generational impact continues to be the hope for Haiti in the future.
