Originally from Gonaïves, Ernst Pady was born in 1958.
As a teenager, he became aware very early on of the particularly troubled socio-political context in which he was brought up.
He has sketched at the cost of an unwavering will the shore of life on which he would like to write his story. For him, it has always been education.
A brilliant and diligent student, he experienced from an early age the afflictions as life distributes them, sometimes for no apparent reason.
“He had polio, he suffered for a long time, but he never let go. He was very robust,” says a member of his family.
The disease passes, the consequences persist, Ernst Pady continues on his way. That of a child the world almost shattered looking for an opportunity to take revenge.
After his classical studies, he didn’t ask himself many questions. He joined the Faculty of Medicine of the State University of Haiti in 1979.
Graduated in 1986, he specialized in pediatrics at the hospital of the State University of Haiti. Certainly, a snub to polio, this childish spinal paralysis and the accompanying muscle weaknesses that he wanted to fight in turn.
After his specialization, he left for Germany, then France in order to perfect his medical training and expand his field of knowledge in pediatrics.
“What to say about a person with such a solid training who lost his life in such a circumstance, how to speak about it”, wonders, the hoarse voice, a member of the management of the university hospital peace where worked the Dr. Pady.
The head of the pediatric service at the La Paix University Hospital, Dr Florence Siné Saint-Surin, also president of the Haitian pediatric society, knew Ernst Pady very well. The man and the doctor.
However, she too needed a little time before answering the Nouvelliste’s questions.
“We are all in shock, I was not prepared for this exercise, I need a few minutes,” laments the president of the Haitian pediatric society.
Finally, she resolved to talk about the one she could always count on in the pediatric department of the University Peace Hospital.
An almost desperate attempt to put a name, a course, a face and a story on a corpse awkwardly abandoned at Avenue Christophe this morning.
“After many training courses abroad, he returned to Haiti. He subscribed body and soul to pediatric care”, remembers Dr Florence Siné Saint-Surin.
He worked at the Church of God reform hospital in Arcahaie, he was in his private practice at the service of all those who needed care in the field of his competence.
In 2006, he joined the pediatric service of the University Hospital Peace where he worked until his assassination, this Sunday February 28, 2021. A Sunday which, as Stendhal would say, predisposes to misfortune.
“He has trained several generations of physicians through the UPH pediatric department.
He was a hard worker, a seasoned doctor who was always available. Despite the after-effects of his childhood illness, he gave himself no limits, on the contrary, it was a source of motivation for him, “remembers Dr Florence Siné Saint-Surin. Words which, if they are powerless, can help restore a layer of dignity to this lifeless body submerged in a lake of blood circulating on social media.
“Pediatricians, I have known some but none of them equaled him. He was a model, a source of inspiration who pushed me to choose medicine and to love pediatrics”, testifies a doctor at the announcement of his death in a short message on Whatsapp.
“He was downright a legend of pediatrics in Haiti. His knowledge, his competence and his experience will be lacking in pediatrics”, testifies a pediatrician trained at the UPH.
Dr Ernst Pady has a daughter, many adopted children and proteges. “This explains the founding of the college that bears his name in Canapé-vert. He wanted the children welcomed into his family to have a quality education. To achieve this, he personally ensured it through Ernst College. Pady, ”explains one of his charges, with an angry face and tired eyes.
The plot of his assassination is of a generosity that characterizes the true heroes of life.
“He has barely come out of a stroke episode and is slowly recovering his neurological faculties
Always in the service of others, he had been looking for material to make a suture for a patient when he was cowardly shot, “said a member of his family literally overwhelmed by this news.
We are terribly upset, insists Dr Florence Siné Saint-Surin when looking back on the life of this man who, she says, has dedicated his life to medicine by always putting himself at the service of others.
“Dedicated doctor in the service of the community, he was also a trainer and mentor of residents at the UPH. He did not let his disability slow him down, let alone limit him”, confides his colleague for 15 years in the pediatric service of the UPH.
Dr. Ernst Pady knows everything about this story that has become a classic in Haiti, the one that leads from the marvelous to the grave at the discretion of the bandits who do not care about the social status of the victims.
He often shared his concerns with his friends about the kidnapping phenomenon, its artifacts and the corpses that accumulate in its wake.
“By traveling this morning for this patient, he thought he was doing what seemed to him the most important to do when you are a doctor: treat. Knowing that at any time, you can become a statistical element, a fact in the news”, mumbles a staff from Ernst Pady College.
There are no words to translate or even appease the anger and disappointment of relatives, parents, colleagues and friends contacted by the newspaper.
Some don’t even understand the need to talk about it since it won’t change anything, they say. Why deplore one case, when we know that the next one is coming soon.
They do not understand why to speak of it as if it were an accident of a subject that the hardening of the living space in Haiti propels to the rank of the permanent concerns of every Haitian. While waiting for his turn or a light at the end of the tunnel.
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