Health education is important wherever you live, but in a place like Haiti, it can make the difference between life and death. In Haiti, a very high percentage of children are too poor to attend school and those who can receive very little health education. The results are tragic to say the least. Many examples of the transformative powers of health education come to mind. Diarrhea is a major killer of kids in developing countries all over the world. Hand washing is an excellent way to prevent diarrhea, especially in a place like Haiti where diarrheal diseases are rampant and frequently passed by hand. If we can convince people to wash their hands more frequently through education, we can reduce the incidence of potentially fatal diseases. Likewise, convincing a person to take their high blood pressure seriously can mean a longer, more productive life. Teaching a pregnant mother about her prenatal nutritional needs and also how to best feed her young child to prevent malnutrition can pay enormous dividends for a struggling family, not to mention, reduce child mortality. I recall as we had begun work on our first video on oral hygiene, some people had questioned that choice, suggesting that was a somewhat minor topic for a health video. That is an understandable perspective for an American to have, but those well meaning people had not seen what I had just seen in Haiti. On my first trip to Hinche, I met Marie Lourdes Noel, a young, recently widowed mother. She was suffering from what Dr. Jim Whitney, one of our excellent dentists, described as "the worst infection I have ever seen." Without getting into difficult details, Marie was near death from a oral infection - the result of Haitian dentistry gone horribly wrong, as it so often does. Our dental team was able to extend and improve the quality of her life. Perhaps, if Marie had understood how daily oral hygiene could have prevented her dental problems, her suffering could have been averted. The thing I would like people to keep in mind about Haiti is that every day people are suffering and dying from completely preventable maladies. Health education can play an important role in saving lives in that struggling country.