As a Christian, family man, and physician, Dr. Mitch Mutter has come to a realization which some fail to grasp during an entire lifetime. It isn’t about him. Soft-spoken, he shuns the spotlight. And his actions speak much more loudly than any words.
Since 1988, Dr. Mutter has helped to provide medical care for the people of Haiti, one of the most impoverished nations in the world, offering hope to people whose struggle to maintain the most meager existence is nothing short of heart rending. Statistics reveal that as many as one in eight Haitian children die before they reach the age of five and that one third of those who survive are chronically malnourished.
Aware of such suffering, Dr. Mutter, a cardiologist with the Chattanooga Heart Institute, had been going to Haiti regularly for seven years, providing care for indigent patients. During that time, he had already seen triumph and tragedy. Then, in 1995, one death, that of a severely malnourished three-year-old child, touched his heart so profoundly that he knew something extraordinary had to be done for Haiti’s children.
For the last 10 years, Dr. Mutter has been the catalyst for the growth of the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti (CNP), a program which is saving countless lives, while also touching the lives of those engaged in the program in a way few other noble endeavors can. His work with CNP is a Christian calling for Dr. Mutter, one from which he initially shied away, but eventually embraced fully.
“This is actually my passion,” he explains. “The real deal is that I have felt called to go and work in Haiti. In my Bible study group, we are looking at material that says God calls you and then equips you. I have always looked at it as the opposite – that God calls you into what he has already equipped you to do. You can run from it, or you can become involved. He has put people in the path of this program, and clearly the people coming into it are involved in the miracles of God equipping them.” Simply put, those involved in CNP are substantially facilitating the miracles of God.
Since its inception, CNP has grown to include the contributions of time, skill, and treasure of more than 1,500 people. In little more than a decade, CNP has grown to encompass several initiatives to improve public health in Haiti. “It has evolved into a program of five principal parts,” relates Dr. Mutter,” and the cornerstone is the Hearth Program, where we go into 114 villages in the district around the town of Leogane, Haiti, and a network of trained nutrition workers called ‘monitrices’ are assigned to multiple villages.”
The Hearth Project monitrices identify malnourished children and bring their families into the program, teaching mothers how to keep children healthy. During 2007, a total of 266 children and their caregivers participated in the Hearth Program, with 84 percent of these recovering and thriving. More severely malnourished children may actually be hospitalized for eight to twelve weeks in the therapeutic care program at the Hopital Ste. Croix in Leogane. Last year, 50 of 55 severely malnourished children in the therapeutic care program recovered.
The four additional major components of CNP are the therapeutic recovery effort for severely malnourished children; mobile clinics which are undertaken several times per year during which teams of 14 nurses, lay people, pharmacists, and physicians see as many as 1,000 patients in a single week in some of Haiti’s most remote population centers; the Safe Water Program, conducted in partnership with Living Water International, which is making progress to ensure that clean drinking water is available; and micro-credit, a program that links families with projects that give them the skills and capital needed to start small businesses or improve agricultural production and pricing. As a part of the therapeutic recovery effort, the Plumpy Nut Project provides vitamin-enriched peanut butter to mothers for their malnourished children who are able to eat, potentially avoiding further deterioration in their conditions. The project is in its pilot phase and is partially supported by UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund). The Safe Water Program recently received a grant from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Dr. Mutter and others also provide general medical care, splinting broken bones, treating malaria, typhoid, and other infections, and dealing with life-threatening maladies which have either been eradicated or could be cured with relative ease in the United States. In 2007, three medical mission trips were undertaken with mobile clinics, and 2,400 Haitians received desperately needed care. Ten community water wells were also repaired during the year.
A native of Johnson City, Tennessee, Dr. Mutter’s perspective on the pain and suffering in Haiti is influenced by his own experience. Growing up in poverty as one of seven children of deaf mute parents, he and his twin brother, Mickey, worked after school as janitors to earn their lunches. As a youngster, he toiled in farmers’ fields and in the school cafeteria. For a number of years, his own hearing was failing, and 18 months ago he received cochlear implants, which have helped to minimize the impairment.
Dr. Mutter and his wife, Carol, who is an attorney and adjunct law professor at the University of Tennessee, have been married for 39 years. She has traveled to Haiti twice. Their three sons, Matthew, Justin, and Andrew, each began visiting Haiti at the age of 12.
A graduate of the University of Tennessee and a member of the Volunteer football team from 1964-68, Dr. Mutter graduated from the UT College of Medicine in Memphis and has since risen to the top of his profession. Earlier this year, the former chief of staff at Erlanger Medical Center received the Tennessee Medical Association’s Outstanding Physician Award for his leadership in the medical community and his humanitarian effort in Haiti. While the personal recognition is appreciated, he sees it as quite secondary to the mission at hand.
“We are like grains of sand,” he says. “I think the personal legacy is that you inspire other people to carry on – your sons and the people you work with. It doesn’t matter if people remember your name a generation or two later. It is the ripple effect. The first thing that I see is God’s call as always being bigger than you are. He calls you to a faith journey, and if it is something you as a person can do alone, then it isn’t a faith journey. My job is to respond to God’s call, and the rest of it is the equipping that I talk about. I plan to do this work in some way until the day I die.”
Through CNP, Dr. Mutter and his numerous colleagues contribute to making a better life for the people of Haiti. He remains humble and acknowledges the tremendous challenges which lie ahead. “I don’t think we will work ourselves out of a job there,” he comments, “but we continue to see miracle after miracle.”
For more information on the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti, contact their office at 1918 Union Avenue, Chattanooga, TN 37404, or call (423) 495-1122.
The author, Mike Haskew, is a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and holds a degree in history. He is a native Chattanoogan and is currently Executive Vice President and Chattanooga City President for Cohutta Banking Company.