Public Health Community Rallies to Aid of Haitian Graduate

Frantz Jean Louis and family look ahead to their new life in Tampa, never losing sight of relatives left behind in their earthquake-ravaged homeland
When Frantz Jean Louis and his 2-year-old daughter Aurelie arrived here Jan 20 from earthquake-ravaged Haiti, they had only the clothes on their backs and one small suitcase. No place to live. No idea of what was next.
Three months later, Jean Louis, a Haiti native and 2009 graduate of the USF College of Public Health, has obtained a used car and a modest apartment, works as a biological scientist trainee, and will begin the PhD program in Molecular Medicine at USF this August. But, even more important to Jean Louis, he was rejoined in March by his wife Myriam, a doctor who had stayed behind in a Port au Prince to help care for the sick and injured.

Lto R: Frantz Jean Louis with daugher Aurelie, 2, and wife Dr. Myriam Jean Louis
At a recent lunch break, Jean Louis was joined by his wife and daughter at the Interdisciplinary Research Building, where he works in the laboratory of mentor Alberto van Olphen, DVM, PhD, director of virology for the USF Center for Biological Defense.
"We want to say thank you, thank you so much to everyone, and all our friends at the College of Public Health, who showed their concern and helped us,” Jean Louis said.
Daughter Aurelie ("Lolie” to her parents), wearing a pink shirt with butterflies, sings as she marches confidently around the building’s atrium. The same little girl who just months before lived in the street after the family’s home was damaged by tremors and cringed at the sound of airplanes and helicopters overhead, now nestles next to her "Mama” and "Papa” and sings "Happy Birthday” to them. She is adjusting well to life in the United States and is popular with all the classmates who rush to greet her each day at daycare, her father said. "She’s happier now. She’s likes playing with all the children at school and loves to sing.”

Aurelie has adjusted well to life in the United States,
and made many friends at day care, her parents say.

Primrose School of Tampa Palms offered to subsidize daycare for Aurelie after hearing of the family’s plight. Others in the USF and Tampa Bay communities also made donations through a fund USF established to help the family start a new life. For a while, Jean Louis and his daughter lived with friends from the USF College of Public Health. Former colleagues at the Department of Health, Bureau of Laboratories in Tampa, organized a benefit spaghetti luncheon for Jean Louis, who conducted a field experience there last summer while finishing his MPH degree with a concentration in global communicable disease.
Azliyati Azizan, PhD, assistant professor of global health, was the research advisor for Jean Louis’ dengue fever special project, along with Lillian Stark, PhD, virology director for the DOH Tampa Lab. She said Jean Louis completed his MPH degree in less than two years on a Fulbright scholarship because he was eager to return to his family in Haiti and find a job there. "We were impressed because he was such a dependable, diligent worker,” Dr. Azizan said.
After graduating in the fall, Jean Louis was back in Haiti less than month when the earthquake hit. After a week of living on the street, surrounded by cadavers, with little food and fears of civil unrest, his wife urged him to get on an airplane and take their U.S.-born daughter to safety.
Now reunited in Tampa, the family worries about their homeless parents and siblings left behind as Haiti’s hurricane season approaches. "With all the wind and rain, the tents they are living in would be washed away,” Jean Louis said.
Myriam Jean Louis continues to stay in touch by phone with physician colleagues Centre de sante de Croix des Bouquets Hospital in Port-au-Prince. She is studying for the GRE and TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and plans to apply to enter the MPH program with the Department of Global Health. Meanwhile her husband is working with Dr. van Olphen’s team to help develop a diagnostic tool for the H1N1 virus.


They eventually want to return to Haiti to help rebuild their native country. In Haiti, where the average life expectancy is age 56, infectious diseases like malaria and tuberculosis threaten the population more than the chronic diseases prevalent in developed nations, Franz Jean Louis said.
"With more education we will be in a better position to make some changes in Haiti’s health system,” Myriam Jean Louis said.
While grateful for the opportunities here, the couple expresses sadness about leaving their struggling country. They take heart in the encouragement of the USF public health community that has rallied around them.
"Frantz endeared himself to all of us,” Dr. Stark said. "He’s the kind of guy who wants to give back.”
"When he brought his wife to visit us at the college,” Dr. Azizan said. "I told her I wouldn’t be surprised to one day see Frantz as Haiti’s minister of health.”