JAN 20: "WHAT WE NEED RIGHT NOW IS ELECTRICITY, WATER, NURSES, SURGEONS AND MATERIALS"

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman visits Dr. Lyon on site at the General Hospital in Port-Au-Prince on JAN 19 as US soldiers arrive to provide security but do not bring supplies. She gets a tour of the facility and interviews Haitian-American doctors and nurses who have been on-site for the last week. This is the most in-depth video coverage and comprehensive reporting and interviews that I have seen provided by any TV media so far.

DR. EVAN LYON: In terms of supplies, in terms of surgeons, in terms of aid relief, the response has been incredibly slow. There are teams of surgeons that have been sent to places that were, quote, “more secure," that have ten or twenty doctors and ten patients. We have a thousand people on this campus that are triaged and ready for surgery, but we only have four working ORs without anesthesia and without pain medications. And we’re still struggling to get ourselves up to twenty-four-hour care.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you need? What would be constructive?

DR. EVAN LYON: What we need right now is electricity, water, nurses, surgeons and materials.

CHANTALE CESAIRE: I’m a registered nurse. I’m from Boston. I came to help, because I felt that if—all the time we talked about helping Haiti, this is the time. And this is—it’s a medical catastrophe. So there’s a lot of Haitians that are in the medical field in the United States, so I thought I could be the first example coming down. Ever since I heard of the problem on Tuesday night, I started working my contacts to try to get here.

Democracy Now, video: With Foreign Aid Still at a Trickle, Devastated Port-au-Prince General Hospital Struggles to Meet Overwhelming Need

DR. MARIE FRANCE CONDE: I’m from Brooklyn, New York. We have a lot of kids, parents, who’ve been here for three, four days. They are hungry. They’re—we’re finished with them. Some of them are waiting to be discharged. Right now we need someone to bring us some food, so we can send them. OK, we want to feed them. They are waiting to be fed now. We cannot keep giving them IV fluids. That’s the help that we need right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it’s important that Haitians come back here?

DR. MARIE FRANCE CONDE: Absolutely, absolutely. We want to make a difference, and we’re hoping that this will open the eyes of everyone who truly wants to help us so we do have a better Haiti.