Hillary Tours Georges Damage In Haiti

On the last leg of her six-nation tour of hurricane-ravaged Central America and the Caribbean, U.S. first lady Hillary Clinton is expected in Haiti Saturday for a two-day inspection of U.S.-funded health facilities.

Aside from the effects of Hurricane Georges, which killed at least 221 people in Haiti, Mrs. Clinton will see a country that is not only the Western Hemisphere's poorest, but also its least healthy.

"The future of democracy depends on the capacity of people to live, work, and reproduce in good health," said Michelle Pierre-Louis, executive director of the Haitian Knowledge and Freedom Foundation, which is funded by financier -philanthropist George Soros. "But in Haiti two out of three farmers are always sick."

Forty percent of the estimated 8 million population of which two thirds is rural have no access to health care and 75 percent have no access to family planning services, a recent U.S. Agency for International Development report stated.

One child of eight does not live to the age of 5, the highest mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere, and one of three is chronically malnourished, the USAID report stated.

Sunday, Mrs. Clinton will visit two U.S.-funded health facilities.

Bienfaisance Hospital in Pignon, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of the capital, provides curative and preventive health care to over 125,000 people as well as training in maternal care, literacy, and family planning.

The Foundation for Family and Reproductive Health, a capital family planning clinic, is a model for reducing adolescent pregnancy.

The father of computer software tycoon Bill Gates, William H. Gates Sr., will accompany Mrs. Clinton on her tour.

The William Gates Foundation has made a three-year, $1.25 million grant to the Family and Reproductive Health clinic and a three-year $1.5 million grant to Management and Resources for Community Health, a suburban Petionville organization which assists women of child-bearing age.

More than one third of girls and young women give birth before the age of 20.

Mrs. Clinton will also visit the Soros-funded Basil Moreau nursery and primary school in suburban Bizoton. The 450 children are given hot lunches and health care and their parents benefit from family planning instruction.

The United States is Haiti's largest international health donor, providing $16.7 million in fiscal 1997.

Hurricane Georges, which hit Haiti on Sept. 22, worsened the country's chronic health problems and poverty.

Mrs. Clinton has also visited Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, hit by Hurricane Mitch, and the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti and also suffered from Georges.

Written by MICHAEL NORTON