Sunday, February 28, 2010
FEB 28: STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL BLOG, REPORT FROM A VOLUNTEER
SCOPE
Haiti Day 2: At The Hospital
Excerpt:
"On my afternoon tour of the hospital on Friday, from the post-op ward to the pre-op ward to pediatrics, as the tragedies multiply, it's this strength of the Haitian people that weakens me most.
The smile of the horribly burned teenage girl who we repeatedly pass in the hallway. The patient eyes of the young man holding the stump of his right leg in the air for the doctor to examine. The single mother of the young woman lying paralyzed in a hospital bed, holding her fifth child, a baby boy, in her lap and singing soft lullabies. And I can't catch my breath.
The little girl with the orange ribbon in her hair that matches her orange socks. The teenage boy turning his back in a hospital corner to apply deodorant. Injured mothers nursing babies. A 5-year-old boy helping his horribly burned 2-year-old sister do her physical therapy.
The heat becomes nearly unbearable."
Excerpt:
"On my afternoon tour of the hospital on Friday, from the post-op ward to the pre-op ward to pediatrics, as the tragedies multiply, it's this strength of the Haitian people that weakens me most.
The smile of the horribly burned teenage girl who we repeatedly pass in the hallway. The patient eyes of the young man holding the stump of his right leg in the air for the doctor to examine. The single mother of the young woman lying paralyzed in a hospital bed, holding her fifth child, a baby boy, in her lap and singing soft lullabies. And I can't catch my breath.
The little girl with the orange ribbon in her hair that matches her orange socks. The teenage boy turning his back in a hospital corner to apply deodorant. Injured mothers nursing babies. A 5-year-old boy helping his horribly burned 2-year-old sister do her physical therapy.
The heat becomes nearly unbearable."
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
FEB 25: HEAVY RAIN HITS HAITI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A child walks in a puddle of water at a makeshift camp for homeless earthquake survivors in Port-au-Prince, Thursday Feb. 25, 2010. Relief officials are scrambling to move more than 1.2 million quake victims out of overcrowded makeshift camps before the start of the rainy season. Photograph by Ramon Espinosa/APfull article and photograph via
ASSOCIATED PRESS
With the official rainy season still a month away, forecasters warn that a potential weekend storm, the first since the Jan. 12 quake, could bring floods and mudslides to a population in a perilous state. Many dwellings are severely damaged or clinging to the sides of hillsides.
Bussreth said he could not move back to his destroyed home because it's on a hillside too steep to pitch a tent.
People who lined up at a downtown site Thursday morning to register for the new campaign to resettle more than 1.2 million Haitians expressed skepticism and were dismissive of the plan, and relief officials acknowledged its immense challenges.
"There will be flooding. There will be discomfort, misery. And that's not avoidable," a top U.N. official for Haiti, Anthony Banbury, told a New York news conference this week.
Gerald-Emile Brun, an architect with the government's reconstruction committee, agreed. "Everything has to be done before the start of the rainy season, and we will not be able to do it," he said Thursday.
Brun suggested that Haitians, who expect little of their corrupt and inefficient government, may largely be left to sort it out themselves.
Camp dwellers - the capital alone has some 770,000 - welcomed the idea of swapping flimsy makeshift tents in the city's fetid center for something more stable. But that didn't mean they wanted to return to their quake-ravaged neighborhoods.
Jean Petion Simplice, a 44-year-old father living with his two boys, wife and mother-in-law under a scrap of sheet in the capital, said he feared returning to his district, which is a shambles.
"They're going to remove us from here, but they won't tell us where we're going," he complained as he joined a line of hundreds to get registered at the Champ de Mars, in the shadow of the collapsed National Palace.
The International Organization for Migration began registration at the plaza Wednesday, collecting people's old addresses in hopes that most can be resettled relatively quickly in their old neighborhoods.
The camp is home to some 60,000 people and was chosen to begin registration because about 45 percent of its residents come from a single Port-au-Prince neighborhood, Turgeau, said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. John Blackwell, who is involved in coordinating the plan.
Not everyone will be able to return to their neighborhood, but relief officials expect to know within two weeks who can after determining which structures are viable and which must be demolished, Blackwell said.
Mark Turner, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said that "this is the big new strategy, our big push right now" - to decongest overcrowded and unsanitary camps. "Most people have some kind of tent or structure. We want to be able to tell people, 'Just pack it up and take it home.'"
Haitian President Rene Preval described the new plan Thursday to visiting Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, saying the idea is to create small camps of 50, 60 or even 100 tents.
Silva, whose troops are leading a six-year-old U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, expressed support for the strategy but said the effort would be challenging because of all the heavy equipment needed to clear neighborhoods of rubble.
"The problem for Brazil and the U.N. teams is to determine the machinery needed do this work," he said.
It is a mammoth task.
Preval has said it would take 1,000 trucks and 1,000 days - more than three years. Brun, of the reconstruction committee, said the government has about 250 trucks and can probably find another 250 in the private sector.
Col. Rick Kaiser, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operation in Haiti, told The Associated Press that the rubble would fill the New Orleans Superdome five times over.
Brun described a lengthy process to get the new strategy moving. Blackwell said engineers have only assessed about 25 percent of the Turgeau neighborhood - so it will take at least until late March to sufficiently clear enough rubble to enable resettlement of the throngs jamming the Champ de Mars.
Officials haven't even decided who will do the demolition and rubble removal, Blackwell said. Could U.S. Army engineers be dispatched to do it? "I don't see it," Blackwell said.
In the meantime, many people remain terrified of another quake.
The U.S. Geological Survey published a new study this week warning that aftershocks - the city has suffered dozens - will continue for many months and almost certainly one will be stronger than a magnitude 5 in the next year. Quake-damaged buildings are particularly vulnerable.
In a parallel resettlement strategy, Brun said the government has been identifying sites outside Port-au-Prince and four other hard-hit towns where it could appropriate land as sites for transitional camps.
Officials say the government would compensate owners for land taken, but land tenure is a politically volatile issue in Haiti, where the courts are clogged with tens of thousands of land disputes.
"The lack of identified land is the dominating issue for shelter," said a report released Thursday by a "shelter cluster" of U.N., U.S. and independent groups working with the government on the issue. So for now, priority is going to the plan to resettle people on the ruins of their old homes or close by.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Heavy rain hits Haiti's quake-ravaged capital
By Michelle Faul / AP Writer
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — The first heavy rain since the earthquake briefly doused Haiti's capital Thursday night as relief officials changed tack on dealing with the homeless, demphasizing plans to build big camps outside Port-au-Prince.
Instead, they want the hundreds of thousands of refugees in this city where barren hillsides and weakened buildings threaten to give way to pack up their tents and tarps and return to destroyed neighborhoods.
People dashed for shelter down streets streaming with runoff from the driving tropical rain. The 20-minute drenching swept trash along roadside gutters, clogging drains and turning depressions into ponds.
Some women stripped naked and took advantage of the downpour to take a shower - there are no bathing facilities in overcrowded tent camps that officials want to move people out of.
At a camp housing 40,000 in the hills overlooking the capital, Matin Bussreth dashed for cover from his bedsheet-tent to a neighbor's plastic tarpaulin.
"It's a deplorable moment," said Bussreth. "I heard they might be giving out tents. I hope someone will be giving me one."
By Michelle Faul / AP Writer
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — The first heavy rain since the earthquake briefly doused Haiti's capital Thursday night as relief officials changed tack on dealing with the homeless, demphasizing plans to build big camps outside Port-au-Prince.
Instead, they want the hundreds of thousands of refugees in this city where barren hillsides and weakened buildings threaten to give way to pack up their tents and tarps and return to destroyed neighborhoods.
People dashed for shelter down streets streaming with runoff from the driving tropical rain. The 20-minute drenching swept trash along roadside gutters, clogging drains and turning depressions into ponds.
Some women stripped naked and took advantage of the downpour to take a shower - there are no bathing facilities in overcrowded tent camps that officials want to move people out of.
At a camp housing 40,000 in the hills overlooking the capital, Matin Bussreth dashed for cover from his bedsheet-tent to a neighbor's plastic tarpaulin.
"It's a deplorable moment," said Bussreth. "I heard they might be giving out tents. I hope someone will be giving me one."
With the official rainy season still a month away, forecasters warn that a potential weekend storm, the first since the Jan. 12 quake, could bring floods and mudslides to a population in a perilous state. Many dwellings are severely damaged or clinging to the sides of hillsides.
Bussreth said he could not move back to his destroyed home because it's on a hillside too steep to pitch a tent.
People who lined up at a downtown site Thursday morning to register for the new campaign to resettle more than 1.2 million Haitians expressed skepticism and were dismissive of the plan, and relief officials acknowledged its immense challenges.
"There will be flooding. There will be discomfort, misery. And that's not avoidable," a top U.N. official for Haiti, Anthony Banbury, told a New York news conference this week.
Gerald-Emile Brun, an architect with the government's reconstruction committee, agreed. "Everything has to be done before the start of the rainy season, and we will not be able to do it," he said Thursday.
Brun suggested that Haitians, who expect little of their corrupt and inefficient government, may largely be left to sort it out themselves.
Camp dwellers - the capital alone has some 770,000 - welcomed the idea of swapping flimsy makeshift tents in the city's fetid center for something more stable. But that didn't mean they wanted to return to their quake-ravaged neighborhoods.
Jean Petion Simplice, a 44-year-old father living with his two boys, wife and mother-in-law under a scrap of sheet in the capital, said he feared returning to his district, which is a shambles.
"They're going to remove us from here, but they won't tell us where we're going," he complained as he joined a line of hundreds to get registered at the Champ de Mars, in the shadow of the collapsed National Palace.
The International Organization for Migration began registration at the plaza Wednesday, collecting people's old addresses in hopes that most can be resettled relatively quickly in their old neighborhoods.
The camp is home to some 60,000 people and was chosen to begin registration because about 45 percent of its residents come from a single Port-au-Prince neighborhood, Turgeau, said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. John Blackwell, who is involved in coordinating the plan.
Not everyone will be able to return to their neighborhood, but relief officials expect to know within two weeks who can after determining which structures are viable and which must be demolished, Blackwell said.
Mark Turner, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said that "this is the big new strategy, our big push right now" - to decongest overcrowded and unsanitary camps. "Most people have some kind of tent or structure. We want to be able to tell people, 'Just pack it up and take it home.'"
Haitian President Rene Preval described the new plan Thursday to visiting Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, saying the idea is to create small camps of 50, 60 or even 100 tents.
Silva, whose troops are leading a six-year-old U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, expressed support for the strategy but said the effort would be challenging because of all the heavy equipment needed to clear neighborhoods of rubble.
"The problem for Brazil and the U.N. teams is to determine the machinery needed do this work," he said.
It is a mammoth task.
Preval has said it would take 1,000 trucks and 1,000 days - more than three years. Brun, of the reconstruction committee, said the government has about 250 trucks and can probably find another 250 in the private sector.
Col. Rick Kaiser, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operation in Haiti, told The Associated Press that the rubble would fill the New Orleans Superdome five times over.
Brun described a lengthy process to get the new strategy moving. Blackwell said engineers have only assessed about 25 percent of the Turgeau neighborhood - so it will take at least until late March to sufficiently clear enough rubble to enable resettlement of the throngs jamming the Champ de Mars.
Officials haven't even decided who will do the demolition and rubble removal, Blackwell said. Could U.S. Army engineers be dispatched to do it? "I don't see it," Blackwell said.
In the meantime, many people remain terrified of another quake.
The U.S. Geological Survey published a new study this week warning that aftershocks - the city has suffered dozens - will continue for many months and almost certainly one will be stronger than a magnitude 5 in the next year. Quake-damaged buildings are particularly vulnerable.
In a parallel resettlement strategy, Brun said the government has been identifying sites outside Port-au-Prince and four other hard-hit towns where it could appropriate land as sites for transitional camps.
Officials say the government would compensate owners for land taken, but land tenure is a politically volatile issue in Haiti, where the courts are clogged with tens of thousands of land disputes.
"The lack of identified land is the dominating issue for shelter," said a report released Thursday by a "shelter cluster" of U.N., U.S. and independent groups working with the government on the issue. So for now, priority is going to the plan to resettle people on the ruins of their old homes or close by.
FEB 25: "THE EMERGENCY IS NOT OVER", DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS ON THE URGENT NEED FOR POST-OP CARE, PHYSICAL THERAPY, PROSTHESIS AND COUNSELING
Excerpt from a report by Doctors Without Borders/Medicins sans Frontieres
Surgeon Angeleke Saridakis discussing the care needed by the over 100,000 amputees in Haiti:
“We’re starting to need, and I mean really need, things like crutches and physiotherapy,” Saridakis said. “Caregivers must provide health care with a special focus on mobilizing people and returning them to a minimally debilitated state.”
MSF has already opened four sites specifically dedicated to post-operative care, and a fifth will open soon. Teams have been working with the independent non-profit organization Handicap International on physiotherapy and rehabilitation programs in several facilities. MSF has also expanded its mental health activities in its various locations and through outreach programs, offering psychological counseling to the injured, the maimed, the homeless, the grieving, and the bereft. Though there are signs that some measure of normalcy has returned to Haiti, there is still, quite clearly, a great deal of work to be done.
“A lot of people are saying that the emergency is over, and I take issue with that,” Saridakis said. “I think it is not over. The emergency is going to be ongoing for months.”
For doctors and amputees alike, many challenges await, she adds, particularly given the ongoing struggle to find decent living conditions for Haitians who lost their homes and now reside in hastily-erected, poorly-served, thoroughly unsanitary camps.
“I contend that until every patient has a prosthesis, and enough physical therapy and mental health counseling that their quality of life is maximized and their disability is minimized—that they’re taught how to live with this disability—until that point, the emergency, in my eyes, is not over,” she said.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
FEB 24: HEALTH CONCERNS OVER LACK OF PROPER SANITATION, UPI REPORTS
full article via
UPIPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Aid workers in Haiti say a chronic shortage of bathroom facilities is threatening the health of thousands of earthquake evacuees.
There are concerns about disease outbreaks in the emergency camps in the Port-au-Prince area where thousands of Haitians have been sheltered since last month's devastating earthquake.
The Miami Herald said Wednesday relief officials want to get 9,000 more portable toilets in place before the rainy season starts in the spring.
Marie-Agnes Heine, spokeswoman for the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization, told the newspaper no significant outbreaks have been reported; however, conditions are ripe for diarrhea and other diseases related to sanitation. "We are afraid it will become a big problem," she said.
Heine said sanitation was a problem in Haiti even before the Jan. 12 quake. An estimated 58 percent of the impoverished island's population had regular access to clean water prior to the disaster.
Monday, February 22, 2010
FEB 22: HOMELESS ACCUSE POLICE OF HALTING AID, AP REPORTS FROM HAITI
full article via
ASSOCIATED PRESS / YAHOO! NEWS
Homeless Haitians: Aid Halted To Force Them Out
By Frank Bajak, AP writer
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Homeless victims of Haiti's earthquake said Monday that police are halting deliveries of food and water to try to force them to leave their camp on the grounds of the prime minister's office.
Police padlocked the main gate to the hillside camp, where about 2,500 homeless people live under bed sheets and tarps propped on sticks on the sloping hill leading to the office. Stinking garbage with swarms of flies was being allowed to pile up and portable latrines were filled, camp residents complained.
Witnesses said police beat 22-year-old Dalida Jeanty after she picked up a broom to sweep around her tent. "They called her and she did not come so they beat her," said her cousin, Alix Jeanty. He was among the friends and relatives who carried the woman down the hill, where U.N. peacekeepers from Chile and India arranged for her to be taken to the hospital.
A police officer guarding the gate to the prime minister's office refused to give his name or comment on the alleged beating. Nor would he discuss accusations they have been turning away trucks carrying food and water for the past 10 days.
Calls to the Information Ministry on Monday were unanswered, as was an e-mail to the prime minister's chief aide.
"We've been here for a month and we were being treated well, but for the past two weeks we have been mistreated," said Markinson Midey, a 22-year-old student. "Anytime they bring food or water, the police make the trucks leave."
Midey and other residents, some of them shouting angrily and banging pans when they saw reporters, said they believe the government wants to make the camp conditions so bad that people will be forced to leave, even though they have nowhere else to go.
After reporters arrived, police opened the gate they'd locked.
Many government buildings were damaged in the Jan. 12 quake and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive is working out of the same office as President Rene Preval at a temporary government headquarters set up in the headquarters of the judicial police, near the airport.
The Jan. 12 earthquake killed about 200,000 people and left 1.2 million homeless, according to the government.
More than half a million people fled devastated Port-au-Prince, but 700,000 are living in every available piece of open land, from public squares and school yards to sidewalks, their only protection makeshift tents of sheets propped up by sticks.
There has been no evidence of any concerted government policy to forcibly remove the homeless from the many spontaneous settlements, however authorities have made it clear they plan to resettle the refugees as soon as more permanent camps can be established outside town.
Many inhabitants of the capital's miserable tent camps got soaked by an overnight downpour. Doctors say many children — half the population of Haiti is under 15 years — are suffering from colds, coughs and diarrhea.
Bellerive told The Associated Press last week that the government will be forced to appropriate private land to build better tent camps with tarpaulins.
But aid agencies taking part in a massive international effort to help victims say the government is dragging its feet even as the rainy season approaches and the need to get people out of congested camps that pose health risks and under proper cover becomes more urgent.
ASSOCIATED PRESS / YAHOO! NEWS
Homeless Haitians: Aid Halted To Force Them Out
By Frank Bajak, AP writer
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Homeless victims of Haiti's earthquake said Monday that police are halting deliveries of food and water to try to force them to leave their camp on the grounds of the prime minister's office.
Police padlocked the main gate to the hillside camp, where about 2,500 homeless people live under bed sheets and tarps propped on sticks on the sloping hill leading to the office. Stinking garbage with swarms of flies was being allowed to pile up and portable latrines were filled, camp residents complained.
Witnesses said police beat 22-year-old Dalida Jeanty after she picked up a broom to sweep around her tent. "They called her and she did not come so they beat her," said her cousin, Alix Jeanty. He was among the friends and relatives who carried the woman down the hill, where U.N. peacekeepers from Chile and India arranged for her to be taken to the hospital.
A police officer guarding the gate to the prime minister's office refused to give his name or comment on the alleged beating. Nor would he discuss accusations they have been turning away trucks carrying food and water for the past 10 days.
Calls to the Information Ministry on Monday were unanswered, as was an e-mail to the prime minister's chief aide.
"We've been here for a month and we were being treated well, but for the past two weeks we have been mistreated," said Markinson Midey, a 22-year-old student. "Anytime they bring food or water, the police make the trucks leave."
Midey and other residents, some of them shouting angrily and banging pans when they saw reporters, said they believe the government wants to make the camp conditions so bad that people will be forced to leave, even though they have nowhere else to go.
After reporters arrived, police opened the gate they'd locked.
Many government buildings were damaged in the Jan. 12 quake and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive is working out of the same office as President Rene Preval at a temporary government headquarters set up in the headquarters of the judicial police, near the airport.
The Jan. 12 earthquake killed about 200,000 people and left 1.2 million homeless, according to the government.
More than half a million people fled devastated Port-au-Prince, but 700,000 are living in every available piece of open land, from public squares and school yards to sidewalks, their only protection makeshift tents of sheets propped up by sticks.
There has been no evidence of any concerted government policy to forcibly remove the homeless from the many spontaneous settlements, however authorities have made it clear they plan to resettle the refugees as soon as more permanent camps can be established outside town.
Many inhabitants of the capital's miserable tent camps got soaked by an overnight downpour. Doctors say many children — half the population of Haiti is under 15 years — are suffering from colds, coughs and diarrhea.
Bellerive told The Associated Press last week that the government will be forced to appropriate private land to build better tent camps with tarpaulins.
But aid agencies taking part in a massive international effort to help victims say the government is dragging its feet even as the rainy season approaches and the need to get people out of congested camps that pose health risks and under proper cover becomes more urgent.
FEB 22: A CAMP IN CITE SOLEIL, REUTERS PHOTO
A man sits at the entrance of his tent at a makeshift camp in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince February 22, 2010. A mild 4.7 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on Monday 20 miles west of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The quake struck at 4:36 a.m./0936 GMT at a depth of 6.2 miles, the USGS said. Photograph by Carlos Barria/Reuters
FEB 22: LAND TO BE TAKEN TO BUILD CAMPS, AP REPORTS
full article via
ASSOCIATE PRESS / THE BOSTON GLOBE
Haiti Official Says Land To Be Taken To Build Camps
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive says the government will appropriate land to build temporary camps for quake victims.
The decision is potentially explosive in a country where a small elite owns most of the land in and around the capital.
That elite, a traditionally corrupting force in Haitian politics, has the power to bring down the government.
The government owns some land but not enough, Bellerive said in an interview Thursday, meaning he has no choice but to take over private terrain.
He would not say how much land will be appropriated.
A report posted at the website of the International Organization for Migration yesterday said at least 1,112 acres of flat, non-flood plain land is needed to settle 100,000 displaced people and Haiti’s government has identified only 47 acres.
The Jan. 12 quake left 1.2 million homeless, about half of them in Port-au-Prince, meaning the government would need to find a total of at least 6,672 acres for quake survivors in the capital, where about a third of Haiti’s nearly 10 million people are concentrated along with the government and almost all industry.
ASSOCIATE PRESS / THE BOSTON GLOBE
Haiti Official Says Land To Be Taken To Build Camps
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive says the government will appropriate land to build temporary camps for quake victims.
The decision is potentially explosive in a country where a small elite owns most of the land in and around the capital.
That elite, a traditionally corrupting force in Haitian politics, has the power to bring down the government.
The government owns some land but not enough, Bellerive said in an interview Thursday, meaning he has no choice but to take over private terrain.
He would not say how much land will be appropriated.
A report posted at the website of the International Organization for Migration yesterday said at least 1,112 acres of flat, non-flood plain land is needed to settle 100,000 displaced people and Haiti’s government has identified only 47 acres.
The Jan. 12 quake left 1.2 million homeless, about half of them in Port-au-Prince, meaning the government would need to find a total of at least 6,672 acres for quake survivors in the capital, where about a third of Haiti’s nearly 10 million people are concentrated along with the government and almost all industry.
FEB 22: OSCAR WINNER SEAN PENN LEADS URGENT CALL TO "BEAT THE RAIN", SHELTER AND RELOCATION URGENTLY NEEDED AHEAD OF RAINY SEASON
ASSOCIATE CONTENT
Sean Penn Wants To "Beat The Rain In Haiti"
Perennial bad boy and Oscar winner, Sean Penn was clearly moved by his recent trip to Haiti shortly after the devastating earthquake. He was one of the first celebrities to aid the relief effort. The actor/activist spent over three weeks living in a tent and trying to help the survivors.
Recently he described his experiences to EXTRA- TV host, Mario Lopez as Civil War- like. He saw amputations being performed with no anesthetics, using whatever tools were available.
Penn and his associate, philanthropist - entrepreneur Diana Jenkins, and their Haitian Relief Organization, have been extremely active and successful in their humanitarian efforts in Haiti. They have cut through red tape and delivered thousands of pounds of medical supplies, hospital equipment and food, as well as medical services to earthquake victims. Their efforts continue.
Now Penn and his partner want to raise awareness and funds to relocate thousands of earthquake survivors now living in tent cities. Something must be done as soon as possible. When the heavy spring rains come in March, these tent cities will be washed away. Residents will be left homeless and vulnerable to diseases such as cholera, typhoid, malaria, tuberculosis and tetanus. Some of these diseases are already spreading due to the unsanitary and crowded conditions of the camps.
As many as 750,000 homeless people are now crowded into tent cities in Port au Prince. With the coming rains, conditions will only get worse, and a massive public health disaster will occur. Shelter from the rain in these camps now is virtually non existent. Sean Penn says in order to help these people "We Need to Beat the Rain in Haiti" and that is the name of his newest campaign.
Penn said that unless people are relocated out of the tent cities soon, when the rains come, disease will be epidemic and thousands will die. Relocation to safer parts of the country is one option, while building and providing temporary shelters is another.
Approximately $8 million is needed to build temporary, 500 square foot homes immediately and to deliver them.
A company in Houston, Texas is building small shed type shelters for the people of Haiti. They want to build 10,000 of them. They cost about $600 each to build and ship.
Penn encourages Americans to donate any amount they can to the Jenkins-Penn Haitian Relief Organization. He wants people to understand that unless relocation and shelters are set up, the rain will be disastrous and diseases will spread "on a scale we've never seen."
WWW.BEATTHERAIN.ORG
Perennial bad boy and Oscar winner, Sean Penn was clearly moved by his recent trip to Haiti shortly after the devastating earthquake. He was one of the first celebrities to aid the relief effort. The actor/activist spent over three weeks living in a tent and trying to help the survivors.
Recently he described his experiences to EXTRA- TV host, Mario Lopez as Civil War- like. He saw amputations being performed with no anesthetics, using whatever tools were available.
Penn and his associate, philanthropist - entrepreneur Diana Jenkins, and their Haitian Relief Organization, have been extremely active and successful in their humanitarian efforts in Haiti. They have cut through red tape and delivered thousands of pounds of medical supplies, hospital equipment and food, as well as medical services to earthquake victims. Their efforts continue.
Now Penn and his partner want to raise awareness and funds to relocate thousands of earthquake survivors now living in tent cities. Something must be done as soon as possible. When the heavy spring rains come in March, these tent cities will be washed away. Residents will be left homeless and vulnerable to diseases such as cholera, typhoid, malaria, tuberculosis and tetanus. Some of these diseases are already spreading due to the unsanitary and crowded conditions of the camps.
As many as 750,000 homeless people are now crowded into tent cities in Port au Prince. With the coming rains, conditions will only get worse, and a massive public health disaster will occur. Shelter from the rain in these camps now is virtually non existent. Sean Penn says in order to help these people "We Need to Beat the Rain in Haiti" and that is the name of his newest campaign.
Penn said that unless people are relocated out of the tent cities soon, when the rains come, disease will be epidemic and thousands will die. Relocation to safer parts of the country is one option, while building and providing temporary shelters is another.
Approximately $8 million is needed to build temporary, 500 square foot homes immediately and to deliver them.
A company in Houston, Texas is building small shed type shelters for the people of Haiti. They want to build 10,000 of them. They cost about $600 each to build and ship.
Penn encourages Americans to donate any amount they can to the Jenkins-Penn Haitian Relief Organization. He wants people to understand that unless relocation and shelters are set up, the rain will be disastrous and diseases will spread "on a scale we've never seen."
WWW.BEATTHERAIN.ORG
Sunday, February 21, 2010
FEB 21: "WE'RE JUST FIGHTING TO SURVIVE", HAITI'S GARMENT INDUSTRY, LOW-PAYING JOBS AND CLINTON'S RECOVERY PLAN
A woman takes a break at the DKDR Haiti garment assembly factory in Port-au-Prince, Friday Feb. 19, 2010. The factory lost two weeks of production after the Jan. 12 earthquake and reopened in late January. Photograph by Javier Galeano / APfull article via
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Can Low-Paying Garment Industry Save Haiti? (click through for article and photo story)
By Jonathan M. Katz (AP)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Jordanie Pinquie Rebeca leans forward and guides a piece of suit-jacket wool and its silky lining into a sewing machine, where — bat! bat! bat! — they're bound together to be hemmed.
If she does this for eight hours, she will earn $3.09. Her boss will ship the pinstriped suit she helped make to the United States, tariff-free. There a shopper will buy it from JoS. A. Bank Clothiers for $550.
In the quest to rebuild Haiti, the international community and business leaders are dusting off a pre-quake plan to expand its low-wage garment assembly industry as a linchpin of recovery. President Barack Obama's administration is on board, encouraging U.S. retailers to obtain from Haiti at least 1 percent of the clothes they sell.
But will that save a reeling country whose economy must be built from scratch?
Few Haitians have steady incomes, and unemployment is unmeasurable; before the quake it was estimated at between 60 and 80 percent. In cities, most scrape by selling in the streets, doing odd jobs or relying on remittances from abroad that make up a quarter of Haiti's $7 billion gross domestic product.
Garments are central to the economic growth plan commissioned by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last year, a 19-page report written by Oxford University economics professor Paul Collier and promoted by former President Bill Clinton as special envoy to the impoverished nation.
They say the sector could quickly produce hundreds of thousands of jobs thanks chiefly to two things: an existing preferential trade deal with the nearby United States, and cheap Haitian labor.
The deal is the Haiti Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act, or "HOPE II." Passed by the U.S. Congress in 2008, it lets Haiti export textiles duty-free to the U.S. for a decade. Last year, $513 million worth of Haitian-made apparel, the bulk of exports, was shipped with labels including Hanes and New Balance. Factory profit margins average about 22 percent, according to Washington-based Nathan Associates Inc.
The cheap labor is Jordanie Pinquie Rebeca, and others like her.
During a recent shift at the South Korean-owned factory where she works six days a week, employees softly sang a Creole hymn beneath the hot fluorescent lights: "Lord, take my hand. Bring me through."
It was HOPE II that persuaded the bosses to move their Dominican plant and rename it DKDR Haiti SA. Nearly all the 1,200 people still working there after the quake make the new "outsourcing" minimum wage of 125 gourdes a day, about $3.09 — approximately the same as the minimum wage in 1984 and worth less than half its previous purchasing power.
Pay was even lower last year when lawmakers raised the country's minimum from $1.72 a day to almost $5 in response to protests. But owners complained, and President Rene Preval refused to enact the law. A compromise allowed non-garment workers to receive the higher minimum, but stuck factory workers with the "outsourcing" wage.
DKDR complied but cut production-based incentives, according to general manager Chun Ho Lee. Producing 600 pieces in a day used to yield a worker a bonus of $2.47. Now it's worth $1.23.
Rebeca, though stylish in her paperboy hat and spaghetti-strap dress, sleeps on the street and barely eats. With a day's pay she can buy a cupful of rice and transport via group taxi, and pay down debt on her now-destroyed apartment. Anything left over goes to cell phone minutes to call her boyfriend, who was evacuated to the Dominican Republic with a leg fracture sustained in the quake, or her 4-year-old son, Mike, whom she sent to live with relatives in the countryside.
Meanwhile, holding that low-paying job makes it tough to get handouts from relief workers.
"The foreigners are giving people food outside, but I can't get anything. I have to stay here working all day," she said.
All sides agree that garment-industry wages are too low to feed, clothe and house workers and their families. Even factory owners acknowledge that reality — though they deny running sweatshops and say the businesses have an important role.
"It's not enough to make a decent living, but it's the first step" toward economic recovery, said George Sassine, president of the Association of Industries of Haiti.
Others said relying too much on clothing assembly is risky.
"The garment sector is creating trouble for the economy because of social tensions and the low wages," said prominent Haitian economist Kesner Pharel.
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, himself an economist, said that while the garment industry shouldn't be ignored, increased investment should be sought in more enduring sectors such as agriculture and tourism.
Still others fear a return to darker times: Under the brutal Duvalier dictatorships that ended in the mid-1980s, a small elite reaped the profits from facilities that assembled garments, baseballs and toys for sale in the U.S.
Last month's earthquake cracked the metal-roofed DKDR building's walls and prompted a costly, two-week shutdown. Another company's factory, west of the capital in Carrefour, collapsed entirely, killing at least 300 workers.
But garment industry production has already rebounded to 80 or 90 percent of capacity, and the boosters' enthusiasm is unshaken.
In a recent opinion piece published in The New York Times, Collier likened the moment to the opening of the American West: "The earthquake could usher in such a boom in Haiti."
There are currently 25,000 garment jobs, three-quarters less than there were 20 years ago. Most are in the same industrial park where DKDR's plant is located. Owners want to expand to two new sites outside Port-au-Prince in line with government wishes to reduce pressure in the debris-choked capital where most of the 200,000 quake victims died.
At an October investors conference, Clinton laid out a vision for Haiti's economy in which garments play a central role: "The rich will get richer, but there will be a much, much bigger middle class, with poor people pouring into it at a rapid rate."
For Haitians like Rebeca, who is unable to find other work, the chances of making that leap seem dim.
"We're just fighting to survive," she said, sewing.
In this photo taken Feb. 19, 2010, Women work at the DKDR Haiti garment assembly factory in Port-au-Prince. An eight-hour day can pay $3.09 and workers pull a six day week. Photograph by Javier Galeano / AP
FEB 21: NEW CAMPS, REUTERS PHOTO
A man stands next to a palm tree on the top of a hill where a makeshift tent camp is being built in Bas Canaan, outside of Port-au-Prince February 21, 2010. At the foot of rocky hills north of Haiti's earthquake-shattered capital Port-au-Prince, new settlements are sprouting as survivors flee the claustrophobic, rubble-clogged chaos of the stricken city. Picture taken February 21, 2010. Photography by Carlos Barria/Reuters
Friday, February 19, 2010
FEB 19: THE URGENT NEED FOR LAND AND HAITI'S ELITE, AP REPORT
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ASSOCIATED PRESS / YAHOO! NEWSHaiti PM: Gov't To Take Land For Temporary Camps
By Michelle Faul, AP
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive says the Haitian government will appropriate land to build temporary camps for earthquake victims. The decision, announced in an interview with The Associated Press, is potentially explosive in a country where a small elite owns most of the land in and around the capital.
That elite, a traditionally corrupting force in Haitian politics, has the power to bring down the government.
The government owns some land but not enough, Bellerive said in an interview Thursday, meaning he has no choice but to take over private terrain. He would not say how much land will be appropriated.
A report posted at the Web site of the International Organization for Migration on Friday said a minimum of 450 hectares (1,112 acres) of flat, non-flood plain land is needed to settle 100,000 displaced people and Haiti's government has identified only 19 hectares (47 acres).
The Jan. 12 quake left 1.2 million homeless, roughly half of them in Port-au-Prince, meaning the government would need to find a total of at least 2,700 hectares (6,672 acres) for quake survivors in the capital, where about a third of Haiti's nearly 10 million people are concentrated along with the government and almost all industry.
Bernard Fils-Aime, a businessman, property owner and president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti, said he was not aware of anyone in the business community being approached by the government about land. He said the issue would need to be treated cautiously.
"Land is one of our very scarce resources and an issue that has underlined many political conflicts in Haiti since independence," Fils-Aime said. He said he was sure the issue could be negotiated amicably but warned: "You don't want to create more conflict."
Aid agencies have criticized the government for dragging its feet on the thorny land issue as relief agencies work against the clock to find temporary settlements for the homeless before the spring rainy season.
Human Rights Watch said Friday that "there is little evidence that meaningful efforts have been made to negotiate the land acquisition and secure proper land titles. It is essential that this be given priority" and that any appropriations "be done in a non-arbitrary and non-discriminatory manner."
The relief agency Oxfam International warned last week that "The temporary camps where people have congregated are fast becoming over-crowded slums."
"The government ... needs to clarify whether there is government land available or if it needs to confiscate private land instead. These decisions need to be taken quickly."
The Haitian government has seemed to operate on a slower timetable. On Friday, the economist leading a government emergency commission on shelter held a news conference, saying government panels will make decisions in three to four weeks, and that the homes will be built in five or six months.
In the meantime, Charles Clermont said, people in the private sector have offered to build 20,000 to 30,000 temporary homes on private land and, presumably, sell them to the government.
Impromptu camps have sprung up on every bit of available land — school and university grounds, public gardens, a golf course, the central Champ de Mars plaza or simply on sidewalks. But the camps, many made of little more than bed sheets propped up by sticks, have little sanitation, and early sporadic downpours already are adding to the misery of their residents.
Health workers warn the rains can bring disease in the camps — something Haiti's already strained health system can hardly handle.
Haitian law provides for the government to seize land as long as it is in the public interest and the owners are fairly compensated, said lawyer Benissoit Jude Detournel, who handles property disputes.
"There has to be a just and equitable indemnity, taking into account the market value of the property," Detournel said. He said setting a price is difficult now in the quake's aftermath.
The government has appropriated land in the past without conflict — to build a wider road on the western outskirts of Port-au-Prince four years ago, to protect underground water aquifers 14 years ago and to construct government buildings in downtown Port-au-Prince in the 1970s, said Jean-Andre Victor, an agronomist who worked on a failed government attempt to survey land ownership in 2003.
But Detournel said his firm still is litigating for owners of land expropriated by the government near the Port-au-Prince airport in the 1980s to build a free-trade zone of factories that churn out T-shirts and other products sold in the United States.
Compensation was paid at the time, but more people showed up later demanding payment, he said.
Squatters, corrupt notaries and judges often means multiple individuals can hold title to the same properties, he said. Detournel said his firm takes few land dispute cases "because you can end up dead, or with someone casting a Voodoo spell on you."
In and around Port-au-Prince, most land is owned by the 11 families generally referred to as "the elite" who have business monopolies and control the government through corruption, said Reginald Abraham, a Haitian-American property developer among more than 2 million Haitians in the diaspora.
"They embed with the government, they decide what's going to happen to the land. They have the government blocking people like me who want to come home and help rebuild Haiti." Abraham said his Haiti United Group, aimed at encouraging Haitians abroad to invest in the country, has more than 900 projects "just sitting on government desks" including plans to develop Gonave island and Isle a Vache as well as building a much-needed port on the southern peninsula.
Bellerive is clearly aware of the stakes.
He told the AP on Thursday, in a separate interview, that the government could fall as political opponents capitalize on its inability to respond strongly to the Jan. 12 earthquake.
Camp-dwellers are also offering resistance. Many don't want to move out of the debris-choked capital, which would separate them from family, jobs and aid. An Oxfam survey of 110 people showed less than a third of them willing to move out of the capital.
Meanwhile, those camps are becoming ever more miserable.
Leonel Martine, a 42-year-old electrician, said a light overnight shower Friday left his camp in ankle-deep water and soaked the mattress he shares with his wife, his daughter and two grandchildren.
"My wife spent the night standing, holding the baby," he said.
___
Associated Press writers Frank Bajak and Jonathan M. Katz contributed to this report.
FEB 19: WSJ PHOTO JOURNAL_"IN NEED OF AID"
IN NEED OF AID: Haitians awaited medical attention Monday at a Mission Rescue clinic next to a camp for the displaced in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A month after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, doctors at the nonprofit say they are now suffering from a lack of volunteers, as many early responders have gone back to their home countries. They also said there is shortage of tents, tarps and food aid for displaced Haitians living in the nearby camps. Photograph by John Moore/GettyImagesWALL STREET JOURNAL, Photo Journal Feb 15 - 19
FEB 19: "TRAGEY WILL STRIKE AGAIN WHEN THE RAINS COME", THE AP REPORTS ON THE FIRST HEAVY RAIN IN HAITI AND THE NEED FOR RELOCATION AND SHELTER
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ASSOCIATED PRESSRain And Mud Pour Over Haiti's Homeless
By Paisely Dodds and Jonathan M. Katz / AP
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A heavy downpour sent the throngs living beside Haiti's shattered national palace cowering under tarps yesterday as the rush of water made much of the camp of earthquake victims impassable - an ominous foretaste of the rainy season to come.
Amputees struggled to maneuver through mud on crutches and wheelchairs.
Many in the makeshift tent cities housing nearly 600,000 people in Haiti's capital still live without even plastic tarps, which the international community is trying to get to everyone by May 1.
So when the rain comes, bed sheets spread on sticks as protection from the sun quickly get soaked and people move in temporarily with neighbors who have waterproof tents. The lucky actually have beds off the ground.
"It's hard to keep my kids clean," said Joseph Dukens, 25, at the camp beside the national palace. "There's too much rain, too much dirt."
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said yesterday that his government could collapse because political foes were capitalizing on its inability to address the staggering fallout of the quake.
Bellerive told the Associated Press that he had two immediate fears - how people living in the streets will deal with the rainy season and the danger of political divisiveness.
"You have the feeling that everyone is trying to do his little part and accuse the other one of not doing his part," Bellerive said, including Haitian politicians, international groups, and the business community. "Everyone is trying to create conflict when we have the same enemy right now: It's misery, it's disaster."
The factions have been wrangling for five weeks over how to house earthquake survivors, but neither the weather nor the people are waiting.
Makeshift camps have hardened into shantytowns, adding a new dimension to the capital's teeming slum life with an extra helping of disease, hunger, and misery brought on by the Jan. 12 disaster, which killed more than 200,000.
People are in some very dangerous places: at the bottom of hillsides they know will collapse in a heavy rain or near riverbeds that are bound to flood. They are crowded into polluted areas where sanitation is limited and disease is already starting to spread.
"The government has said for weeks that they have identified sites, but time is getting short and there has been little progress," said Ian Bray, an Oxfam spokesman.
Yesterday, a group of U.S. senators sent a letter to President Obama urging the immediate relocation of displaced Haitians to higher ground before the rainy season begins in earnest.
"Tragedy will strike again when the rain comes," they wrote. "We urge your administration to stress this point with President [Rene] Preval and Prime Minister Bellerive."
Sens. George LeMieux and Bill Nelson of Florida, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also encouraged long-term investment, micro-loans for small businesses, and movement of commerce outside Port-au-Prince.
FEB 19: FLIGHT LOGS REVEAL SUPPLY CHAOS AT HAITI AIRPORT
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THAINDIAN NEWS
Haiti Flight Logs Reveal Chaotic Supplies
By Madhuri Dey
A study of the landing logs of the flights undertaken by the United States military in order to supply relief to the earthquake ridden country of Haiti has revealed that the relief supplies did not reach the country according to the order of preference. In fact, it has been revealed, to the shock of many, that in the first few flights, supplies were taken to the country on the basis of who or what came first, and not on the basis of what was needed first by the people.
While the documents show that the aid was definitely provided on a rather chaotic manner, they also disprove the claims that aid was delayed by the Air Force in order to give priority to the military flights. The documents reveal that in many cases, the first flights that were taken to Haiti contained washcloths, and maybe Senators, instead of the vitally important food and water or doctors. It has been reported that initially, the Air Force did try to accommodate the military flights first. However, soon, the flights began carrying the supplies, on a first come first serve basis.
The problem stemmed from the fact that it was not possible for the officials to determine the level of importance of everything that was supposed to be on the flight, a job rendered particularity difficult on account of the fact that all the parties insisted on the vitality of their aid. As a result, planes that carried medical supplies along with doctors were taken on a detour to the Dominican Republic, resulting in the delay of the setting up of medical centers.
THAINDIAN NEWS
Haiti Flight Logs Reveal Chaotic Supplies
By Madhuri Dey
A study of the landing logs of the flights undertaken by the United States military in order to supply relief to the earthquake ridden country of Haiti has revealed that the relief supplies did not reach the country according to the order of preference. In fact, it has been revealed, to the shock of many, that in the first few flights, supplies were taken to the country on the basis of who or what came first, and not on the basis of what was needed first by the people.
While the documents show that the aid was definitely provided on a rather chaotic manner, they also disprove the claims that aid was delayed by the Air Force in order to give priority to the military flights. The documents reveal that in many cases, the first flights that were taken to Haiti contained washcloths, and maybe Senators, instead of the vitally important food and water or doctors. It has been reported that initially, the Air Force did try to accommodate the military flights first. However, soon, the flights began carrying the supplies, on a first come first serve basis.
The problem stemmed from the fact that it was not possible for the officials to determine the level of importance of everything that was supposed to be on the flight, a job rendered particularity difficult on account of the fact that all the parties insisted on the vitality of their aid. As a result, planes that carried medical supplies along with doctors were taken on a detour to the Dominican Republic, resulting in the delay of the setting up of medical centers.
FEB 19: THE SANITATION PROBLEM AND THE THREAT TO HEALTH, NY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHY STORY
As hundreds of thousands of people displaced by last month's earthquake put down stakes in the squalid tent camps of Port-au-Prince, the authorities are struggling to address the worsening problem of human waste. The problem has become impossible to overlook in many districts of Port-au-Prince, with the stench of decomposing bodies replaced by that of excrement. Photograph by Todd Heisler / The New York Times
Due to the high volume of human waste, trucks have been dumping excrement and medical waste nearby. Sindia Michel, 33, moved to the Troutier trash dump after her shack collapsed in the earthquake. She scavenged for firewood with one of her five children near the pits of excrement. "I do what it takes to endure," she said. Photograph by Todd Heisler / The New York Times
Children gathered around a truck as it dumped water in a trash dump near Cité Soleil. Just steps away, human waste is now being legally dumped on a regular basis due to the increased sanitation needs from the numerous tent cities that have sprung up after the earthquake. Children who live nearby earn money digging through the debris to find salvageable material. Photograph by Todd Heisler / The New York Times
FEB 19: THREE IN A MILLION - VOICES FROM THE HAITIAN CAMPS
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COMMONDREAMS.ORG
Three in a Million - Voices from the Haitian CampsBy Bill Quigley
The United Nations reported there are 1.2 million people living in “spontaneous settlements” or homeless camps around Port au Prince. Three people living in the camps spoke with this author this week, before the hard rains hit.
Jean Dora, 71
My name is Jean Dora. I was born in 1939. I live in a plaza in front of St. Pierre’s church in Petionville [outside of Port au Prince]. I am here with twelve members of my family. We all lost our home.
We have a sheet of green plastic to shade us from the sun. We put up some bed sheets around our space.
I have many small grandchildren living here with me. My son and daughters live with here too.
My daughter will soon have a child. She will go to the Red Cross tent when it is time for the baby to come.
I worked for the Chinese Embassy for 36 years. I cleaned their offices. I retired in 2007. Until the earthquake I lived in an apartment with my family. The building was destroyed.
At night we put a piece of carpet down on the ground. Then we lay covers down and try to sleep. When it rains, the water comes in.
We bring bottles to fill up with water. But we have very little food.
There is no toilet in the park. We must go behind the church.
My son used to work to support us. He is a good chef. He worked at a restaurant by the Hotel Montana. The restaurant was destroyed. He lost his job. There is no work.
During all my days, I have never seen anything like this. I am not in a good position to say what will happen next. I think things are not going to change. I hope things will get better. But I don’t think so.
My son has no job and he cannot help our family. If my son is working, we can all stand up. If he is not working, we are down.
The future is not clear. It looks dark for us.
Nadege Dora, 28
My name is Nadege Dora. I am 28. I have three boys and one girl. I am supposed to deliver my baby this month.
I now live in the plaza in Petionville with the rest of my family. Our house was destroyed. I used to sell bread on the street to make a little money. The father of the children does not help us. It is as if we are not alive to him.
We are just trying to survive. No one in our family is working. There is no work.
If you get a ticket you can go get a bag of rice. But I am a pregnant woman. I cannot fight the crowds for a ticket. I tried. But people were squashing me and I was afraid I would get knocked down and crushed.
My niece helped a woman bring rice back from Delmas [another neighborhood outside of Port au Prince]. She shared her rice with us. Right now we still have some rice. But we have no oil. No meat, no milk, nothing but rice. We have no money to buy other ingredients.
Since the earthquake I have never eaten a full meal.
When my baby comes, I will go to the Red Cross tent to have the baby. I went there to see a Doctor. They gave me some pills. Those pills made me sick.
The mayor came here and asked people if we had relatives in the countryside. They would help us go there. But we do not want to go to the countryside. We don’t know anybody in the countryside. We need to have a better life than this.
Garry Philippe, 47
My name is Garry Philippe. I am 47. I live by the airport entrance. I built my own tent. I tied a sheet to a tree and I put up poles to hold up other sheets.
I live here with my five children. My wife was killed in our house in the incident. We lived in Village Solidarity. I owned our house. I built our house over 4 years, step by step, as I got the money. I was outside when it happened. My girls were by the front door and ran out. My wife ran back to help the boys and she died.
We had no funeral for my wife because we have no money for a funeral. I buried her myself in a cemetery by Cite Soleil.
The children cannot imagine that their mother is gone just like that. They are always thinking about their mother.
We do not have beds. When it is time to sleep we put bags on the ground. Then we put our covers on the bags and sleep.
We wash ourselves by putting water in a bottle. Then we stand in a pot and pour the water on our selves.
When it rained we went to a place where they had a plastic tent. We stayed there till the rain stopped. More than 20 people were inside that tent.
Before, I was a mechanic in a garage. Where I worked was destroyed. There is no work since the quake.
We heard other camps got bags of rice. In our camp, nothing. I ask friends for food. Sometimes someone will give us something to eat.
We have no toilet in this camp. When we have to make a toilet, we do it in a bag. Then we bring the bag to the edge of the camp. It is about a one minute walk away.
We see the trucks going in and out of the airport. Many trucks. But the trucks never stop for us.
It is not safe here. But what can I do? I accept it, it is God’s work. We pray in the camp together.
No one has come to talk to us to tell us what is going on. We know nothing about tents or tarps. There is no school for the children.
I cannot tell you exactly what is going to happen next. I am not the Lord. I think it is going to get worse for us in the camps. We need tents and food. We need water and school and jobs. We need help to find a place to stay. The rain is coming soon. Water is going to come and our babies will lose their lives.
Bill is legal director at the Center for Constitutional rights and a long time human rights advocate. This article was written with the assistance of Vladimir Laguerre in Port au Prince. You can contact Bill at quigley77@gmail.com.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
FEB 18: HAITI FLIGHT LOGS DETAIL EARLY CHAOS AND CHALLENGES AT AIRPORT , AP REPORTS
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ASSOCIATED PRESS / THE WASHINGTON POSTHaiti Flight Logs Detail Early Chaos
By Martha Mendoza
Washcloths arrived before water, and senators before surgeons. In the first chaotic days after Haiti's earthquake, some vital aid was forced to wait because the U.S. military took relief flights at the Port-au-Prince airport on a first-come, first-served basis, according to landing logs.
The logs, reviewed exclusively by The Associated Press, document who flew in before and after the U.S. Air Force assumed control of the landing strip that was the sole lifeline for relief. They largely disprove accusations from some humanitarian groups that the U.S. held up aid in favor of military flights.
The Air Force did initially give priority to military units that were sent to secure the airport, distribute aid and keep the peace. But then it started taking flights according to a reservation system open to anyone.
Because of that, key aid was delayed in some cases while less-critical flights got in.
Nearly all the groups sending in aid insisted their load was urgent, said Air Force Capt. Justin Longmire, who has been coordinating the flight schedules and is helping prepare the airport to reopen for commercial flights on Friday.
"Could I take the list of all the flights and put it in order of most important to least important? Water? Food? Digging equipment? Doctors? I don't think so," Longmire said.
The result: Church of Scientology ministers landed, as did AP reporters, CNN's Anderson Cooper and diapers from Canada. But a French portable hospital and planeloads of doctors with medical supplies were diverted to the Dominican Republic.
Planes carrying half of a Norwegian field hospital landed in Port-au-Prince, while those carrying the other half were diverted to the Dominican Republic and had to be trucked in over the mountains, delaying the opening of one of Haiti's first post-quake field hospitals.
"It was extremely frustrating," said Norwegian Red Cross spokesman Jon Martin Larsen.
When the quake hit, the global crush of compassion turned the Haitian capital's airport into a virtual baseball catcher with "pitchers throwing balls from all directions all at the same time," as Air Force Lt. Gen. Glenn F. Spears put it.
Before the quake, the single, 10,000-foot runway had handled 20 flights a day without radar, with pilots landing visually with the help of controllers on radios. Afterward, traffic on the runway soon rivaled that of any at Chicago's O'Hare Airport on a busy afternoon, with planes landing or taking off every two minutes.
With the seaport in ruins, hundreds of planes loaded with missionaries, medical teams and military forces dashed to Haiti without designated landing times and only 10 spaces for large planes to park. There was no room on ramps for planes to unload their cargo, and some planes didn't have enough fuel to leave.
The traffic snarls in the air were exceeded by utter chaos on the ground. For days the airport was packed with aid workers, journalists, airport employees and others with nowhere else to go. They slept on luggage carousels, fought over space for their equipment and dodged rats.
"It was a madhouse," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Bob Millmann, an adviser on airlift operations in Haiti. "We saw a situation that was untenable, like stuffing 5 pounds of sand into a 3-pound sack."
Air Force controllers started guiding air traffic a day after the quake and assumed official control from Haitian authorities three days later. They used a system developed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It requires pilots to dial an Air Force telephone bank to get an assigned landing time.
"When the Air Force took over the tower, things made a marked turn," said Jon Fussle, a pilot for the nonprofit coalition Haiti Relief Group.
Rescuers, countries and aid groups complained early on of a bottleneck that kept lifesaving equipment, medical care and supplies from Haitians who were trapped, injured or made homeless by the quake.
They blamed the Air Force as five planes carrying 85 tons of medical and relief supplies from Doctors Without Borders were diverted to the Dominican Republic, and three charter planes carrying water and tarps from the Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse were turned back. Doctors Without Borders claimed that the diversions cost lives and forced the organization to buy hardware-store saws in Port-au-Prince for amputations.
However, most of the problems occurred before the Air Force took full control. And the AP review found that at least one Doctors Without Borders plane headed for Haiti without a landing slot, and circled as controllers unsuccessfully tried to squeeze it in.
U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes commended the U.S. for the system it set up.
"The Americans taking over the Port-au-Prince airport was absolutely crucial," he said in an interview Wednesday. "Clearly there were some glitches. But I don't think there was any intention to favor military flights over humanitarian flights. It was simply quite difficult to set up a system that included genuine real-time priorities."
The waiting list for a daylight landing slot is now about a month long, with about 1,000 planes in line, although those willing to land between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. can get in much sooner. Pilots said the phone lines are frequently tied up.
The AP reviewed restricted federal logs from Jan. 16, when the Air Force began managing air traffic, to Feb. 8. It also had exclusive access to logs from Jan. 12 to Jan. 16 through FlightAware, a Houston- and New York-based company that tracks air traffic in the United States.
Those logs show that on the first day of Air Force management, 48 flights from the U.S. and 25 from other countries landed. More than half of the American flights were military or government. But the Air Force defends that decision in the name of security, adding that many of the flights also carried aid.
"No one knew what the response of the Haitian people would be to this terrible event, but we knew we had to secure the airport to save lives," Spears said. "So yes, we did send in men and women with guns, and we have not needed to use them."
In the days that followed, the balance shifted toward aid: Logs show that 52 percent of planes that landed were from U.S and international non-governmental agencies, primarily the World Food Program but also such organizations as the Mormon Church and the American Red Cross; 22 percent were from the U.S. military, including security personnel and medical teams, and 18 percent were requested by the Haitian government, which gave access to cell phone companies and private planes carrying the president and his wife.
As of Jan. 18, the U.N. World Food Program was put in charge of assigning landing times for non-governmental organizations.
While countless flights were diverted early on, only 17 - including six from the U.S. Defense Department and one from Doctors Without Borders - were diverted between Jan. 16 and Feb. 8, according to the logs. That is less than 1 percent of the 2,318 flights allowed to land during those weeks.
Meanwhile, 336 aircraft failed to show up for their assigned slots.
Even as the Air Force required pilots to book landing slots, many worked around the system and flew in without them, the AP review showed. On Feb. 8, only 140 flights had landing slots. As many as 400 - from helicopters to Pipers - arrived in Port-au-Prince.
"I'm not going to sit there and turn anybody in, or turn myself in, but they told us, 'If you guys come in and can park in the grass, just identify yourselves and land,'" said Carlos Gomez, whose Miami charter company shuttles medical supplies, food and other relief for $28,000 a trip.
The system has had its glitches: Controllers recently lost track of a Learjet they thought was circling while waiting to land. They stopped all landings before discovering the jet was already on the ground. At night, when a runway bulb goes out, the whole string of lights goes dead, forcing crews to stop all landings until they can figure out which bulb blew.
But Air Force officials note that there have been no accidents.
In an interview, Millmann, the brigadier general, gazed at an electronic board showing hundreds of planes heading toward Haiti from all directions, and said proudly: "We want people to know how we've done this - the good, the bad and the ugly. In the end, this is the whole world coming together to help those in dire need of help."
---
Associated Press news researcher Julie Reed and AP Writers Jonathan M. Katz in Haiti and Charles J. Hanley in New York contributed to this report.
FEB 18: THE AP REPORTS ON LACK OF A PLAN TO SHELTER THE 1.2 MILLION PEOPLE LEFT HOMELESS, SHANTYTOWNS GROW AS DOES THE THREAT OF MASS OUTBREAKS
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Haiti's Quake Survivors Don't Wait For Gov't Plan
Excerpts:
"The government has said for weeks that they have identified sites, but time is getting short and there has been little progress," said Ian Bray, an Oxfam spokesman.
That's one problem. Another is that people simply do not want to go far from where they always lived and worked. With property hard to come by, aftershocks continuing and 38 percent of Port-au-Prince's buildings destroyed by the magnitude-7 quake, according to U.N. satellite imagery, their options are limited.
"People are displaced, they've lost their homes but they haven't lost their jobs," said Alex Wynter of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "The key issue is land."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, making the first visit ever by a French head of state to his nation's former colony, pledged 16,000 tarps and 1,000 tents to house 200,000 people while touring the ruins of Port-au-Prince's collapsed national palace Wednesday.
Haiti's own leader, President Rene Preval, has been less decisive.
"We have to find a solution to get people under shelter — a combination of tents, tarps, corrugated tin roofs ... whatever combination it is," Preval told The Associated Press during a half-hour interview this week. He did not elaborate.
FEB 18: DONATE TO SHELTERBOX, TENTS TOP PRIORITY AHEAD OF RAIN
SHELTERBOX, Tents Are Urgently Needed In Haiti
An update from the ShelterBox Response Team and info how you can donate to this charity that provides full survival tent kits to Haitians.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
FEB 17: OVER 100,000 AMPUTEES ESTIMATED IN HAITI REPORTS TIME MAGAZINE
TIME, Haiti: What to Do with a Nation of Amputees
Excerpt:
Outside the Medishare tent ward, Florida orthopedic surgeon Dr. Albert Volk watches a teenage girl limp by on crutches and shakes his head. "An open tibia fracture, with the bone exposed," he says. "Chances are in six months she'll lose the leg below the knee."
Victims like her could eventually bring the number of Haiti's quake-related amputees to as many as 150,000 — meaning almost 2% of the nation's 9 million people could be in that condition by year's end. (To get a sense of scale: the years of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq have, so far, produced just about 1,000 amputees among U.S. military personnel.) So can Haiti ever move ahead if such a large share of it has so much trouble moving at all, without the prosthetic help needed to be productive again? Artificial-limb donations are beginning to trickle in; doctors are urging charities, especially in the U.S., to collect used prostheses, as the late Princess Diana convinced them to do for land-mine victims. But it's obvious that Haiti can't rely on foreigners to fill such a vast order, or to provide the necessary physical therapy its amputees will require to be able to use them at all. "This could be the single biggest medical problem [Haiti] will have as a result of the earthquake," says Dr. Volk (Florida orthopedic surgeon volunteer).
Blog Opinion:
Follow this site back to the beginning to understand how the amputations were largely the result of the lack of antibiotics and basic medical care arriving within a window of time to prevent infections. Gangrene set in and forced medical staff to amputate, often in what they called "Civil War like" conditions. Now Doctors are saying that post-op care and rehab facilities are needed urgently to prevent more amputations and loss of life. Is anyone listening at this point?
Excerpt:
Outside the Medishare tent ward, Florida orthopedic surgeon Dr. Albert Volk watches a teenage girl limp by on crutches and shakes his head. "An open tibia fracture, with the bone exposed," he says. "Chances are in six months she'll lose the leg below the knee."
Victims like her could eventually bring the number of Haiti's quake-related amputees to as many as 150,000 — meaning almost 2% of the nation's 9 million people could be in that condition by year's end. (To get a sense of scale: the years of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq have, so far, produced just about 1,000 amputees among U.S. military personnel.) So can Haiti ever move ahead if such a large share of it has so much trouble moving at all, without the prosthetic help needed to be productive again? Artificial-limb donations are beginning to trickle in; doctors are urging charities, especially in the U.S., to collect used prostheses, as the late Princess Diana convinced them to do for land-mine victims. But it's obvious that Haiti can't rely on foreigners to fill such a vast order, or to provide the necessary physical therapy its amputees will require to be able to use them at all. "This could be the single biggest medical problem [Haiti] will have as a result of the earthquake," says Dr. Volk (Florida orthopedic surgeon volunteer).
Blog Opinion:
Follow this site back to the beginning to understand how the amputations were largely the result of the lack of antibiotics and basic medical care arriving within a window of time to prevent infections. Gangrene set in and forced medical staff to amputate, often in what they called "Civil War like" conditions. Now Doctors are saying that post-op care and rehab facilities are needed urgently to prevent more amputations and loss of life. Is anyone listening at this point?
FEB 17: PREPARING FOR BEDTIME, AP PHOTO GALLERY
The Fritz Casseus family prepares for bedtime inside their tent at a camp set up for earthquake survivors left homeless in Port-au-Prince, Tuesday Feb. 16, 2010, one month after a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti. Thousands were left homeless after the earthquake. Photograph by Ramon Espinosa/AP
FEB 17: "WE NOW NEED A SURGE IN EFFORT", OXFAM SAYS SHELTER AND SANITATION ARE URGENT AHEAD OF RAIN
OXFAM
With Rain, Urgency Grows For Shelter And Sanitation In Haiti’s Capital
The race is on to beat the rain and provide displaced people with the shelter and sanitation services they desperately need following the January earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince.
Excerpt form Oxfam update:
But as the rain approaches, the concern isn’t just for weather worthy shelter. Sanitation services have become a critical issue as well–especially latrines.
The numbers are frightening.
Aid groups estimate that the devastated region needs 18,000 toilets, but as the first-month anniversary of the quake approached, those groups and local workers had been able to dig fewer than 1,000 latrines. Oxfam had installed more than 20 percent of them—testament to its commitment in this area of expertise.
But the need remains enormous, especially as the rains approach and threaten to slop human waste into temporary settlements and crowded camps where there is little room to improve the drainage.
“We now need a surge in effort to improve sanitation facilities for people in Haiti,” said Marcel Stoessel, head of Oxfam in the country. “Let us not kid ourselves that this is going to be easy. It requires a Herculean humanitarian effort from all quarters. Around 230,000 people lost their lives on Jan. 12. It is our priority to make sure that we don’t let that number grow.”
The race is on to beat the rain and provide displaced people with the shelter and sanitation services they desperately need following the January earthquake that destroyed much of Port-au-Prince.
Excerpt form Oxfam update:
But as the rain approaches, the concern isn’t just for weather worthy shelter. Sanitation services have become a critical issue as well–especially latrines.
The numbers are frightening.
Aid groups estimate that the devastated region needs 18,000 toilets, but as the first-month anniversary of the quake approached, those groups and local workers had been able to dig fewer than 1,000 latrines. Oxfam had installed more than 20 percent of them—testament to its commitment in this area of expertise.
But the need remains enormous, especially as the rains approach and threaten to slop human waste into temporary settlements and crowded camps where there is little room to improve the drainage.
“We now need a surge in effort to improve sanitation facilities for people in Haiti,” said Marcel Stoessel, head of Oxfam in the country. “Let us not kid ourselves that this is going to be easy. It requires a Herculean humanitarian effort from all quarters. Around 230,000 people lost their lives on Jan. 12. It is our priority to make sure that we don’t let that number grow.”
FEB 17: DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS DETAILS THE DECISIONS LEADING TO AMPUTATIONS AND THE URGENT NEED FOR POST-OP CARE
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS/MEDICINS SANS FRONTIERES
Haiti: The Thinking Behind The Hard Choices
The conditions confronting Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) surgeons Angeleke Saridakis and Paul McMaster in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti were as daunting as any they’d ever encountered. Working day and night in a devastated city, they and their colleagues manned makeshift operating theaters while contending with shortages of equipment, electricity, personnel, food, and water.
They could offer little in the way of post-operative services and couldn’t say when re-supply bottlenecks would clear. And one after another, Haitians were arriving with “brutal injuries,” said McMaster—badly broken bones, multiple fractures, crushed limbs, wounds that hadn’t been treated immediately and were already infected. Saridakis was reminded of injuries she’d seen in war zones on previous missions, except this was “on a larger scale.” Even in the worst conflict areas, there is an ebb and flow to emergency medical needs. In Haiti, however, everyone had been wounded at the same time.
The conditions forced medical teams to make scores of wrenching decisions. Among the most difficult, both surgeons said, was whether or not to amputate a limb. “Amputation is clearly the last resort,” said McMaster, “something done only after all other options are considered.” And, in fact, amputations represent a small fraction of all the surgical procedures MSF has performed in Haiti.
In some cases, though, given the circumstances, there is no other choice. “There’s not a single surgeon that I met that isn’t disturbed every time they have to do an amputation,” said Saridakis. “These are a highly motivated and compassionate group of surgeons who have left their private practices, who have left their comfortable lives and have gone to try to help these men, women and children, and not a single one was dismissive about the impact that an amputation would have on a human being’s life.”
“But when it comes down to life or limb,” she said, “every trauma surgeon—even at level one trauma centers—will tell you, between life and limb, we always try to preserve life.”
Saridakis delineates three groups of patients who might require an amputation, each of which presents doctors with different considerations, each of which affects doctors in different ways, all of which were seen in abundance in Haiti: “The first group are people that truly have crushed limbs that cannot be salvaged under any context. And those patients, certainly you do an amputation with a sense of loss for the patient who is losing a limb, but you know that even under the best circumstances, this is what this patient would need. The second group is more difficult. Those are patients that you recognize that under the best circumstances, if you had the resources that one has back home, there is a likelihood that you would be able to salvage the limb. It’s difficult to do amputations in these patients, but you do it anyway in order to save their lives.”
“And the third group,” she continued, “are people that clearly would need amputations in any context because their infection has advanced, because they were brought to us late.”
In cases where amputation is not immediately required, McMaster said, “we have clear guidelines on the management of these severe wounds. We remove all dead tissue, leaving the wound completely open, and we do not do any suturing at all at that stage.” Days later, the bandages are removed and the wound is re-examined. “If healing is beginning,” he said, “then the wound itself can be closed. If it is not, then further action will be needed.”
The lifesaving and contextual logic underpinning the choice to amputate does not always mute the visceral response, however. “It’s especially difficult when it’s a kid,” Sardarkis said. “And, yes, I did experience that. And it was a very difficult decision. We discussed it as a team, and discussed it with the mother as well, but it is done in order to save lives.”
It’s never an easy decision, McMaster said. “Having to amputate the limbs of children who have already been deeply traumatized by their experiences is always hard to do.”
Many MSF surgeons were informed by lessons learned in past missions, in places beset by conflict, natural disasters, or other medical emergencies and shortcomings. “The normal surgery we undertake in civilian practice really doesn’t prepare you for the shock of these types of injuries and the severity and extent of it all,” McMaster said. “In MSF, because of our wide experience in conflict and other earthquake disasters, we’ve sadly learned that it is necessary early on to take that critical decision and undertake amputation.”
The need for care does not end once the limb is removed, however. Rather, a new and equally crucial phase begins, one that involves after-care specialists, physiotherapists, mental health counselors, reconstructive surgeons and others who can help the patient learn to adapt to their situation—learn, in essence, to live and move again. This is a particular concern at present, as some emergency medical organizations, believing the acute phase to the emergency to be complete, have begun to leave Haiti.
“We’re starting to need, and I mean really need, things like crutches and physiotherapy,” Saridakis said. “Caregivers must provide health care with a special focus on mobilizing people and returning them to a minimally debilitated state.”
MSF has already opened four sites specifically dedicated to post-operative care, and a fifth will open soon. Teams have been working with the independent non-profit organization Handicap International on physiotherapy and rehabilitation programs in several facilities. MSF has also expanded its mental health activities in its various locations and through outreach programs, offering psychological counseling to the injured, the maimed, the homeless, the grieving, and the bereft. Though there are signs that some measure of normalcy has returned to Haiti, there is still, quite clearly, a great deal of work to be done.
“A lot of people are saying that the emergency is over, and I take issue with that,” Saridakis said. “I think it is not over. The emergency is going to be ongoing for months.”
For doctors and amputees alike, many challenges await, she adds, particularly given the ongoing struggle to find decent living conditions for Haitians who lost their homes and now reside in hastily-erected, poorly-served, thoroughly unsanitary camps.
The conditions confronting Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) surgeons Angeleke Saridakis and Paul McMaster in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti were as daunting as any they’d ever encountered. Working day and night in a devastated city, they and their colleagues manned makeshift operating theaters while contending with shortages of equipment, electricity, personnel, food, and water.
They could offer little in the way of post-operative services and couldn’t say when re-supply bottlenecks would clear. And one after another, Haitians were arriving with “brutal injuries,” said McMaster—badly broken bones, multiple fractures, crushed limbs, wounds that hadn’t been treated immediately and were already infected. Saridakis was reminded of injuries she’d seen in war zones on previous missions, except this was “on a larger scale.” Even in the worst conflict areas, there is an ebb and flow to emergency medical needs. In Haiti, however, everyone had been wounded at the same time.
The conditions forced medical teams to make scores of wrenching decisions. Among the most difficult, both surgeons said, was whether or not to amputate a limb. “Amputation is clearly the last resort,” said McMaster, “something done only after all other options are considered.” And, in fact, amputations represent a small fraction of all the surgical procedures MSF has performed in Haiti.
In some cases, though, given the circumstances, there is no other choice. “There’s not a single surgeon that I met that isn’t disturbed every time they have to do an amputation,” said Saridakis. “These are a highly motivated and compassionate group of surgeons who have left their private practices, who have left their comfortable lives and have gone to try to help these men, women and children, and not a single one was dismissive about the impact that an amputation would have on a human being’s life.”
“But when it comes down to life or limb,” she said, “every trauma surgeon—even at level one trauma centers—will tell you, between life and limb, we always try to preserve life.”
Saridakis delineates three groups of patients who might require an amputation, each of which presents doctors with different considerations, each of which affects doctors in different ways, all of which were seen in abundance in Haiti: “The first group are people that truly have crushed limbs that cannot be salvaged under any context. And those patients, certainly you do an amputation with a sense of loss for the patient who is losing a limb, but you know that even under the best circumstances, this is what this patient would need. The second group is more difficult. Those are patients that you recognize that under the best circumstances, if you had the resources that one has back home, there is a likelihood that you would be able to salvage the limb. It’s difficult to do amputations in these patients, but you do it anyway in order to save their lives.”
“And the third group,” she continued, “are people that clearly would need amputations in any context because their infection has advanced, because they were brought to us late.”
In cases where amputation is not immediately required, McMaster said, “we have clear guidelines on the management of these severe wounds. We remove all dead tissue, leaving the wound completely open, and we do not do any suturing at all at that stage.” Days later, the bandages are removed and the wound is re-examined. “If healing is beginning,” he said, “then the wound itself can be closed. If it is not, then further action will be needed.”
The lifesaving and contextual logic underpinning the choice to amputate does not always mute the visceral response, however. “It’s especially difficult when it’s a kid,” Sardarkis said. “And, yes, I did experience that. And it was a very difficult decision. We discussed it as a team, and discussed it with the mother as well, but it is done in order to save lives.”
It’s never an easy decision, McMaster said. “Having to amputate the limbs of children who have already been deeply traumatized by their experiences is always hard to do.”
Many MSF surgeons were informed by lessons learned in past missions, in places beset by conflict, natural disasters, or other medical emergencies and shortcomings. “The normal surgery we undertake in civilian practice really doesn’t prepare you for the shock of these types of injuries and the severity and extent of it all,” McMaster said. “In MSF, because of our wide experience in conflict and other earthquake disasters, we’ve sadly learned that it is necessary early on to take that critical decision and undertake amputation.”
The need for care does not end once the limb is removed, however. Rather, a new and equally crucial phase begins, one that involves after-care specialists, physiotherapists, mental health counselors, reconstructive surgeons and others who can help the patient learn to adapt to their situation—learn, in essence, to live and move again. This is a particular concern at present, as some emergency medical organizations, believing the acute phase to the emergency to be complete, have begun to leave Haiti.
“We’re starting to need, and I mean really need, things like crutches and physiotherapy,” Saridakis said. “Caregivers must provide health care with a special focus on mobilizing people and returning them to a minimally debilitated state.”
MSF has already opened four sites specifically dedicated to post-operative care, and a fifth will open soon. Teams have been working with the independent non-profit organization Handicap International on physiotherapy and rehabilitation programs in several facilities. MSF has also expanded its mental health activities in its various locations and through outreach programs, offering psychological counseling to the injured, the maimed, the homeless, the grieving, and the bereft. Though there are signs that some measure of normalcy has returned to Haiti, there is still, quite clearly, a great deal of work to be done.
“A lot of people are saying that the emergency is over, and I take issue with that,” Saridakis said. “I think it is not over. The emergency is going to be ongoing for months.”
For doctors and amputees alike, many challenges await, she adds, particularly given the ongoing struggle to find decent living conditions for Haitians who lost their homes and now reside in hastily-erected, poorly-served, thoroughly unsanitary camps.
“I contend that until every patient has a prosthesis, and enough physical therapy and mental health counseling that their quality of life is maximized and their disability is minimized—that they’re taught how to live with this disability—until that point, the emergency, in my eyes, is not over,” she said.
MSF surgeon Paul McMaster tends to a patient at a makeshift operating theater outside Carrefour Hospital, five days after the January 12 earthquake in Haiti. Photograph by MSF
MSF surgeon Paul McMaster tends to a patient at a makeshift operating theater outside Carrefour Hospital, five days after the January 12 earthquake in Haiti. Photograph by MSF
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
FEB 16: BBC WITH REPORT FROM SHELTERBOX CHARITY AS RAIN APPROACHES
BBC, Shelterbox Volunteer In Haiti: 'Chaos And Devastation'
Excerpt:
"The rainy season started three days ago [12 February] and they need proper shelter as opposed to bed sheets which is what they are using at the moment, and the need isn't stopping and the response isn't stopping." says ShelterBox volunteer Tom Lay
Excerpt:
"The rainy season started three days ago [12 February] and they need proper shelter as opposed to bed sheets which is what they are using at the moment, and the need isn't stopping and the response isn't stopping." says ShelterBox volunteer Tom Lay
FEB 16: AP PHOTO GALLERY
A man stands next to a statue the leader of the Haitian Revolution and the first ruler of an independent Haiti, Jean Jacques Dessalines, at a makeshift camp for homeless earthquake survivors at the Champ de Mars plaza in Port-au-Prince, Tuesday Feb. 16, 2010. Nicolas Sarkozy's upcoming visit on Feb. 17, the first ever by a French president, is reviving memories of the costs of Haiti's 1804 independence. Photograph by Dario Lopez-Mills/APAP via YAHOO!, Continuing Photo Gallery from Haiti
FEB 16: HEAVY RAIN BRINGS MUDSLIDES, 4 SCHOOLCHILDREN KILLED
full article via
UPIMudslide Kills 4 Haitian Schoolchildren
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- Four children died and eight were hurt after mudslides poured into a classroom in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, aid workers said.
Heavy rain sent dirt and boulders from a nearby mountain crashing into the classroom of 8-year-olds at a school in a residential area of Haiti's second largest city, The Miami Herald reported.
"It was madness," said Jess Lozier, coordinator for Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, which helps provide sanitation, electricity and clean water to developing countries.
Haitian National Police officers, U.S. Army troops and doctors from Help Haiti Heal helped remove children from the rubble. The number of students in the classroom was not known, but Lozier said the school's director indicated "all the other kids were accounted for."
Cap-Haitien residents also reported two small earthquakes overnight, but the U.S. Geological Survey said it received no reports of earthquakes in Haiti's northern region, the newspaper said. The area is on a different fault line than the one that triggered the 7-magnitude earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, and surrounding cities Jan. 12.
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- Four children died and eight were hurt after mudslides poured into a classroom in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, aid workers said.
Heavy rain sent dirt and boulders from a nearby mountain crashing into the classroom of 8-year-olds at a school in a residential area of Haiti's second largest city, The Miami Herald reported.
"It was madness," said Jess Lozier, coordinator for Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, which helps provide sanitation, electricity and clean water to developing countries.
Haitian National Police officers, U.S. Army troops and doctors from Help Haiti Heal helped remove children from the rubble. The number of students in the classroom was not known, but Lozier said the school's director indicated "all the other kids were accounted for."
Cap-Haitien residents also reported two small earthquakes overnight, but the U.S. Geological Survey said it received no reports of earthquakes in Haiti's northern region, the newspaper said. The area is on a different fault line than the one that triggered the 7-magnitude earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, and surrounding cities Jan. 12.
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