REMEMBERING
DR. ROBERTO PEIGNE
1979 - 2022
Dr. Roberto Peigne was HHP's first medical director, serving for nine years from its inception in 2013, bringing equitable health care to the people of his beloved Haiti. A gifted doctor and surgeon, he left his post in 2021 to reunite with his family and seek security in the U.S. as violence and unrest swept the country. Dr. Peigne had just joined our U.S. Board of Directors weeks before he was killed in a senseless act of gun violence in Florida.
For all he did to make our lives better, he lives on in all of us. Rest in peace, dear colleague and brother. It is up to us now to continue your work.
A True Son of the Borderland
The border region of Haiti and the Dominican Republic is marked with the ambivalence of two passionate cultures that can exist neither with nor without one another. Dr. Peigne’s backstory made him the perfect leader to guide the medical center, Centre de Santé Union de Grand Gosier, and the Southeast Haiti region into the future.
Dr. Peigne’s single mother, from Jacmel, Haiti, fled to Santo Domingo, DR, when pregnant with him to escape having to give him up to his father’s prosperous family from Anse-a-Pitres, just inside the Haitian border. At age 3 months he was kidnapped from his mother and brought back to Haiti to be raised by his father’s family. He did not see his mother again until he left for medical school in the DR. As a Dominican doctor, he returned to the border region to fulfill the social service requirement of his residency. It was there in 2013 that he met Louise Lindenmeyr and forged the partnership with HHP that helped launch CSUG.
Dr. Peigne continued his surgical training at the Hôpital Université de la Paix in Port-au Prince, becoming a general surgeon in 2018. In addition to his work at CSUG, he became a fellow in pediatric surgery at Saint Damien Hospital in Haiti’s capital. He won a fellowship with Francesca Rava Foundation, enhancing his training in collaboration with hospitals in Milan and Pescara, Italy. Dr. Peigne specialized in congenital malformations of newborns and children, making him one of four surgeons in this field in all of Haiti.
Dr. Peigne’s vision was to provide access to the full range of healthcare throughout the Southeast department of Haiti, including surgical services which are desperately needed. His work with HHP and the clinic in Marjofre were the foundation of that goal, and his leadership will benefit the marginalized people of the border region for decades to come.
