He was a blue helmet of the UN, he adopted his daughter in Haiti and today he leads a mobile hospital in Córdoba

In her life story, Romina Madrid (40) always knew that she wanted to dedicate herself to doing something that had to do with helping others. With the arrival of the new millennium, she was inclined to study medicine at the National University of Cordoba (UNC). He still remembers that admission to college was “tremendous.” Luckily, he had gone to a school specializing in Natural Sciences that allowed him to face that challenge at just 18 years old.

“Income was super low in 2000. It was difficult, but I did it,” she happily recounts 23 years after that experience.

In her training as a university student, Romina went through countless public hospitals. For him National Hospital of Clinicsby the Maternity and Neonatology University Hospital, and dozens of other medical centers where she learned, specialized, and forged the pediatrician she became.

Meanwhile, that desire to help someone and to transform realities became more acute. “Pediatrics is clinical, basically. It gives us tools to care for ‘the little ones’, but we also have knowledge to help the older ones”, he shows.

In 2011, at just 28 years old, Romina finished her residency in pediatrics and a long professional path that she had started a decade earlier. She worked at a medical center where everything was running smoothly, but she needed another challenge. It was so that she took her stethoscope and went to do medicine in the neighborhoods of the city of Córdoba.

That same year he was presented with a human and professional challenge: being a blue helmet in a United Nations mission in Haiti.

The doctor did not hesitate. She gathered courage and went to the Caribbean country to put herself in service. In 2010, Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake that left more than 200,000 dead, thousands injured and multiple damages. And the inequalities in that country, the poorest in America, deepened more and more.

“It was a great challenge to go to Haiti. At that time, being a blue helmet was being part of a job for the United Nations Organization. The UN employed people with different profiles. With the group that I went to, we work in a relocatable hospital in Port-au-Prince”, explains the doctor. And she lists: “We were doctors with different specialties on the mission. I went as a generalist. But there were also other people who went to purify the water, electrical works, among others”.

A first six-month trip that multiplied over time

The first trip that Romina made was with a stay of six months. And although she worked in the hospital that the UN had set up in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, after a few weeks she decided to leave that camp and also attend orphanages, in the displacement camps. She wanted to see the harshest and cruelest Haiti.

“From the moment you set foot in Haiti, the whole world changes. We are used to drinking water, to having electricity. To study in schools and public universities. And even, to have public health. There none of that exists. Everything is much more difficult”, Madrid tells The voice.

Once that job was done, the HIM decided to withdraw the mission in Haiti for security reasons.

Romina, her husband and other colleagues returned to Córdoba. They resumed their private jobs to support themselves. But they did not forget that experience that had transformed them.

With some contacts remaining in the Caribbean country, they decided to return on other occasions. Those trips were already on their own, outside the UN mission. We try to go once a year. We carry medical and humanitarian aid. This task comforts our lives, our souls and our hearts”, confides the professional.

Claudine, the name of the daughter that Haiti gave to Romina

Two months ago, Romina traveled to the city of Anse-à-Pitre, a Haitian commune located in the Belle-Anse district, in the southeastern department. She went to feel out territory for him. next trip you have planned for January 2024.

Currently, the situation facing the country is one of extreme violence. Reach Port-au-Prince is impossible, due to the escalation of insecurity and homicides that are registered.

The most stable situation, in this context, is to fly to the Dominican Republic and then, by land, travel to the border to reach Anse-à-Pitre, where patients could be treated. Always with the collaboration of people from Haiti, who support the solidarity work of Madrid and other professionals.

On one of the many trips, and one of the health services that the professional did in mountain settlements together with a French nun, she met Claudine, a little girl who is now her eldest daughter.

“When we started working with the nun, many people began to approach us, they gained confidence and saw in us that we could be a solution to some of the problems they have”, describes the doctor. And she adds: “In this framework, the legal adoption of our first daughter, who is 16 years old today, takes place.”

Romina met the girl when she was 3 years old in medical care. “That day I saw many children. We had brought lollipops. When it’s my turn to see her, I give her the candy and she tells me that it was the first time she had eaten that candy, ”she narrates.

Romina said that this response supermobilized her. But the story stopped there. On another trip, she sees her again in another mountain settlement. There her neighbors tell her the family story that Claudine was going through: At only 3 years old, it had already been sold to be restavek.

“They had sold her to be a domestic employee for other Haitians with greater purchasing power,” says Romina.

It was in this context that she decided, together with her husband, to adopt the girl. “At some point, you realize you can’t solve everyone’s problems, but we wanted to give her love, a home, and an education,” she says.

The adoption process was not easy for the couple. As in Argentina, Madrid explains that it is complicated because there is no body that speeds up the paperwork.

“In Córdoba there are other families that have adopted. Our experience was stormy,” she recalls.

Today, her eldest daughter is super-integrated in Córdoba. She “she came when she was little. She didn’t speak Spanish, but she learned fast. You listen to her talk and you don’t realize that she is Haitian, ”says the doctor with emotion. And she confides: “she loves to dance and sing”.

Founding a mobile hospital

Since her first experience in Haiti, back in 2011, Romina embraced volunteering. She knows that it is a task that transforms her and makes her a little better every day. “One goes with the idea of ​​helping, but later you realize that the one being helped is one,” she says.

As a result of his travels and his concerns as a professional, Madrid founded, together with other colleagues, the Hospital Ambulante, a non-governmental organization that provides solidarity health care to Córdoba and other provinces of Argentina.

“All the work we do is voluntary and to honor. We do not have sponsors, but people who want to help us can write to us on Instagram ”, explains Madrid. And she continues: “As you move away from the capital, you see all the deficiencies there are. For July, we are putting together a sanitary action in the province of Misiones that will last for seven days. But when we go to places closer to Córdoba, we do it in a weekend”.

To learn more about the task carried out by the solidarity group, you can write to the following account: hospital.ambulante.

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