JAN 20: "URGENT AND VITAL ATTENTION TO THE PEOPLE HAS BEEN DELAYED"

JAN 20, Reuters reports that Medicins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders is claiming the US has mismanaged control of the airport in Port-Au-Prince by putting military flights ahead of medical relief including turning away several planes carrying supplies for MSF.

Here are excerpts from the Reuters article below:
Francoise Saulnier, head of the legal department of aid group Medicins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) said days had been lost because the main airport in Port-au-Prince, now under U.S. control, had been blocked by military traffic.

"We lost three days," she told Reuters Television in an interview. "And these three days have created a massive problem with infection, with gangrene, with amputations that are needed now, while we could have really spared this to those people."

The aid group, set up in 1971 by a group of journalists and doctors including France's current foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has complained that 5 aeroplanes carrying 85 tonnes of drugs and surgical supplies have been turned away from Port-au-Prince since Sunday night.

"So it's just apocalyptic at the moment with people in a very, very bad and deteriorating condition," she said, adding that there had been "real mismanagement of vital issues".

"You have the three first days to get people out of the buildings, then three others to give them medical and surgical attention and then all the rest, emergencies, food, shelter, water -- all this comes after," she said, speaking in English.

"And now everything has been mixed together and the urgent and vital attention to the people has been delayed (for) military logistics, which is useful but not on day three, not on day four, but maybe on day eight. This military logistic has really jammed the airport and led to this mismanagement."

Reuters, full article, French Aid Group MSF Accuses US Over Haiti Delays