The Overseas Medical Sponsorship (OMS) is a program created by the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) and the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad (AMHE) to provide interested health care professionals, individuals or organizations in the United States and Canada with the unique opportunity to help ensure the professional service of young and highly-motivated local physicians, medical residents or nurses willing to work with the BRA to deliver medical care to children and families affected by disease and poverty in remotely-located rural bateyes of the Dominican Republic.

More than 200,000 Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent live in the bateyes (sugar cane plantations rural slum communities set up to house Haitian migrant cane cutters) in precarious conditions without access to adequate shelter, nutrition, sanitation facilities, education or medical care. The population is marginalized and plagued by high rates of HIV/AIDS/STIs, Tuberculosis, diarrhea, blindness, Diabetes, infant mortality, etc. While medical facilities inside the bateyes are extremely inadequate and scarce, many batey residents often have serious difficulties to access outside medical services due to extreme poverty, racial discrimination or fear of deportation. Another impediment to health care for the population is often the lack of interest in or willingness by local career medical professionals to work inside the bateyes.

The BRA responds to the long-term health needs of the vulnerable population by building adequate health care facilities and recruiting foreign and young local medical practitioners to work inside the bateyes. Former US President, Bill Clinton, acknowledged the work of the BRA on September 10, 2005, “The Batey Relief Alliance is doing important and difficult work. They need our continued support.” The goal of the OMS ultimately is to ensure that the batey population freely receives from local care providers dignified and culturally oriented medical care inside its own batey communities.

An Overseas Medical Sponsor is recruited by the BRA or AMHE to sponsor the basic salary of a young physician, resident or nurse willing to work for a minimum of one year at one of the BRA’s medical facilities at batey Cojobal or Cinco Casas in the province of Monte Plata. Immediately after the start of a sponsorship, a full professional background with a picture of the sponsored local professional (SLP) is provided to the sponsor. The sponsor also becomes a one-on-one mentor to his/her SLP in and monitors his/her professional growth. The sponsor maintains constant and direct contact with his/her SLP via telephone, email, or visits to the batey. The sponsor receives from the BRA annual work progress reports on his/her SLP. BRA matches all that by providing to the SLP a new career path – and lodging and meals at its new medical center complex’s medical house.

A full-time annual salary (+ benefits) for one local physician is US $11,500. A full-time annual salary (+ benefits) for one local medical resident is US $9,500. A full-time annual salary (+ benefits) for one local nurse is US 6,500.

For a sponsorship application or more information, contact Dr. Paul Nacier at 1+ 917.748.1326 or pnacier@aol.com. You may also contact Ulrick Gaillard at 917.627.5026 or bra@bateyrelief.org. Review BRA’s Internet Site at www.bateyrelief.org or AMHE’s at www.amhe.org.