AVANSE HAITI

APR 1: "YOU SHOW THEM THE TRUTH", NEW PARTNERS IN HEALTH VIDEO, CALL FOR AID ACCOUNTABILITY

2010-04-01T21:15:00.000-07:00

Haiti IDP Camps video 2 from Adam Stofsky on Vimeo.

APR 2: COLLEGE STUDENTS IN MICHIGAN RAISE MONEY AND VOLUNTEER TO HELP BUILD ORPHANAGE

2010-04-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

Students at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan staged a volleyball tournament to raise money for a program that is building an orphanage in Haiti while training Haitians on how to build earthquake resistant housing. REACH (Reconstruction Efforts Aiding Children without Homes) was founded by Lawrence Tech alumnus Don Stevens in an effort to build homes for children affected by natural disasters, war and poverty. Three Lawrence Tech students and two alumni spent spring break in Haiti helping build two new homes at an orphanage in Les Cayes.

TECH NEWS Lawrence Tech Students, Alumni Reflect On Experiences In Haiti

REACH Pwoje Espwa Sud - Les Cayes

APR 1: "A HISTORY OF EXPLOITED ECONOMIC POLICY", NPR ON HAITI'S HISTORY AND POVERTY

2010-04-01T20:40:00.000-07:00

NPR International Relations With Haiti Have Long Been Complex

Interview with Brian Concannon, director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Includes the following quote attributed to Bill Clinton while in Haiti (from NPR recording):

NPR: Here's former President Bill Clinton speaking with a reporter about this very subject while in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital just after the earthquake.

Unidentified Woman: Are the problems in Haiti in part due to your political policies when you were president?

President Bill Clinton: Yes. It's very difficult to say that now, to people whose loved ones have been killed. But Haiti was a house of cards that we built through a history of exploited economic policy, which has been revealed by this natural disaster. Now we have a chance to rebuild a more independent society, ending exploitation, forgiving their debt and bringing back real sustainability.

MAR 31: "WE DON'T REALLY SEE NOTHING", AL JAZEERA ON HAITIANS MISTRUST AND SKEPTICISM OF INT'L AID

2010-03-31T15:45:00.000-07:00

MAR 26: "KEEPING PEOPLE ALIVE ANOTHER DAY", UPI REPORTS ON LAST WEEK'S DOWNPOUR AND BEGINNING OF RAINY SEASON

2010-03-26T20:25:00.000-07:00

full article via
UPI
Haiti's Homeless Beset By Rainy Season

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 26 (UPI)
The 1.3 million Haitians left homeless by an earthquake more than two months ago face torrential rains flooding their makeshift housing, aid workers said.

A downpour lasting several hours Thursday sent sheets of water down sloping terrain, flushed out latrines and turned homeless camps into quagmires, The Times of London reported Friday.

"It was a nightmare. I was very frightened," Alide Orelice, who lives in a tent city on a golf course, told the newspaper.

Government officials estimate at least 200,000 of the people left homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake are particularly vulnerable, and thousands more are at risk from unsanitary conditions.

"We could have a huge second wave of casualties," former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, said recently.

"This has the makings of major humanitarian disaster," Alex Wynter, spokesman in Haiti for the International Federation of the Red Cross, told the British publication. "The rainy season for us boils down to a simple imperative of keeping people alive another day."

The original plan was to build large transitional settlements for the homeless on safe sites outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, which was devastated by the earthquake. That hasn't happened and the Haitian government has been accused of corruption in its distribution of humanitarian aid, The Times said.

International aid workers have been handing out 100,000 tarps and tents every week, officials said.

© 2010 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

MAR 25: "ONE FILTER, ONE LIFE", CNN VIDEO

2010-03-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

MAR 25: RAISE FUNDS AND AWARENESS / APPLY SOME PRESSURE

2010-03-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

"Tragedy will strike when the rain comes."

A group of US Senators wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama urging the immediate relocation of Haitians to safer ground.

(February 19, The Guardian UK)

"When the rain comes, it will be a public health disaster. It could easily be on the scale of the earthquake itself."

Oscar-winning actor and director Sean Penn, who has been in Haiti running an aid organization he established following the quake.

He has been driving a campaign called Beat The Rain.

(February 19, Hollywood News)

"We're running out of time."

John Holmes, the UN's humanitarian chief in Haiti, as new camp sites have yet to be opened to relocate some of the 1.3 million people made homeless by the quake. Haiti's largest landowners, the Preval government and the UN have been unable to reach agreements on the needed land sites for over two months.

(March 19, The Associated Press)

"The US is an hour and a half from here. We can help everyone if we get our priorities straight."

Former Georgetown Hoya, NBA All-Star and Olympic gold medalist Alonzo Mourning interviewed while in Port-au-Prince right after the quake, clearing rubble from a medical aid site and helping care for children with Project Medishare, a charity he has supported for many years.

(January 18, The Times London)

www.shelterboxusa.org

www.oxfamamerica.org

www.beattherain.org

www.standwithhaiti.org

www.doctorswithoutborders.org

www.redcross.org

MAR 23: EX-PRESIDENTS VISIT HAITI, ASSOCIATED PRESS

2010-03-23T19:20:00.000-07:00

Former President George W. Bush, center, stretches his hand to shake it with an unidentified man next to Haiti's President Rene Preval, left, and former President and U.N. special envoy for Haiti Bill Clinton at a homeless earthquake survivors camp in Port-au-Prince, Monday, March 22, 2010. Clinton and Bush are on a one-day visit to Haiti to assess recovery needs, after being tapped by President Barack Obama to spearhead U.S. fundraising in response to the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. Photograph by Jorge Saenz / AP

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Presidents Bush, Clinton Visit Devastated Haiti

article details via AP:
- The two former leaders, who were tapped by President Barack Obama to spearhead U.S. fundraising for the crisis, made their first joint visit as part of the mission to raise aid and investment for the impoverished Caribbean nation.

- Clinton and Bush later greeted quake survivors camped on the Champ de Mars, the national mall filled with 60,000 homeless people.

- About 100 supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide staged a protest outside the national palace, burning tires and demanding the return of their exiled leader.

- Clinton and Bush visit as the country struggles to feed and shelter victims of the magnitude-7 quake, which killed an estimated 230,000 people. Another 1.3 million quake survivors are homeless, with many living in camps prone to dangerous flooding in the April rainy season.

- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has also announced he would cancel Haiti's debt to his country, which the IMF had listed at more than $200 million.

- The nonprofit Clinton Bush Haiti Fund has raised $37 million from 220,000 individuals including Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who gave $1 million, and Obama, who among other donations gave $200,000 of his Nobel Peace Prize. About $4 million has gone to such organizations as Habitat for Humanity, the University of Miami/Project Medishare mobile hospital in Port-au-Prince and the U.S. branch of the Irish charity Concern Worldwide. The rest has yet to be allocated.

MAR 23: DEMOCRACY NOW ON BUSH, CLINTON VISIT TO HAITI

2010-03-23T18:55:00.000-07:00

via "Headlines" on
DEMOCRACY NOW
Haitians Protest Bush, Clinton in Port-au-Prince

Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton visited Haiti on Monday in their roles as co-chairs of the US relief effort there. Dozens of Haitians took part in a protest in the capital Port-au-Prince to denounce the former presidents’ policies toward Haiti while in office. Bush cut off desperately needed aid to Haiti and backed the overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, supported the first coup against Aristide in 1991. Clinton, meanwhile, helped restore Aristide, but only on condition that he accept harsh neoliberal reforms. Protester Elizabeth Pierre singled out Bush, who was making his first-ever visit to Haiti.

Elizabeth Pierre: “I hear that former President George Bush is here. I am asking President Clinton to excuse himself so I can talk to George Bush, because George Bush is President Aristide’s kidnapper.”

On Monday, Clinton said he and Bush discussed Haiti’s reconstruction needs and pledged to seek congressional backing for a law granting trade preferences to Haitian products.

Bill Clinton: “We spent most of our time talking today about what needs to be done now so that the economic plan and the donor conference to be held at the end of this month has a chance to work. So we pledged to do what we could to get the changes adopted by Congress that would enable you to make maximum use of this law, and I think could create more than 100,000 jobs in Haiti in short order.”

MAR 23: "RE-THINK STARVATION WAGES", HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE ON THE NEED TO INCREASE PAY FOR HAITI'S GARMENT WORKERS

2010-03-23T17:50:00.000-07:00

As Bill Clinton is pushing his economic plan for Haiti, one that entails luring garment manufacturers back to the country from China and other Asian countries based on a cheap work force being right on the US doorstep, many critics are calling this plan little more than a return to the sweatshop practices that did little to improve the lives of Haitians when their textile industry was booming. Currently garment workers earn $3 per day and work six day weeks. The Haitian Parliament tried to increase the minimum wage to $5 per day but Preval backed down when the existing garment manufacturers who produce for the US complained.

full article via
THE HUFFINGTON POST
Haitian Garment Workers Should Get At Least $5 A Day
By Robert Naiman, Policy Director of Just Foreign Policy

Americans want to help Haiti; Democrats control the U.S. Congress; the Haitian Parliament has passed legislation saying Haitian workers should be paid at least $5 a day; and specific legislation that provides preferential access to the U.S. market to garments from Haiti is already U.S. law. Therefore, the following policy reform ought to be a slam dunk: Haitian garment workers whose products receive preferential access to the U.S. market under the HOPE II Act ought to be paid at least $5 a day.

The international community is dusting off a plan to expand Haiti's low-wage garment assembly industry as a linchpin of recovery, AP reports. The Obama Administration is on board, encouraging U.S. retailers to obtain from Haiti at least onr percent of the clothes they sell. Garments are central an economic growth plan commissioned by the UN and promoted by former President Clinton, the UN's special envoy for Haiti.

In 2008, Congress passed the "HOPE II" Act, which lets Haiti export textiles duty-free to the U.S. for a decade.

Currently, the minimum wage in Haiti for garment workers who produce for the U.S. consumer market is $3.09 a day. Last year the Haitian Parliament passed legislation to raise the minimum wage for all workers from $1.72 a day to $5 a day. But factory owners in the export sector producing for the U.S. consumer market complained to Haitian President Preval, and he refused to implement the law. A compromise was reached: the minimum wage is now $5, except for the garment workers; they get $3.09 a day.

AP gives the example of Jordanie Pinquie Rebeca, a garment worker:
Rebeca ... guides a piece of suit-jacket wool and its silky lining into a sewing machine...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.

AP says that even the factory owners concede that garment-industry wages are too low to feed, clothe and house workers and their families.

As for Rebeca:
Rebeca ... 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.

Should a worker in Haiti whose job is supported by U.S. consumer demand, whose product has preferential access to the U.S. consumer market, be forced to live like this?

The U.S. Congress could raise Rebeca's daily wage from $3.09 to $5 - a 60% increase - simply by enacting into U.S. law the benchmark established by the Haitian Parliament. Indeed, it is likely that if Democrats in Congress merely signaled their willingness to enact this benchmark into law, Haitian parliamentarians could do the rest. They could go to President Preval and say: "Look, the Americans want this." And President Preval would have to listen.

Suppose that it takes Rebeca a day to produce that suit, an assumption that the AP article seems to imply is plausible. Is it too much to ask that she get an extra $2 for making a $550 suit? If we could ask the customer in the U.S. who purchased the suit for $550 for a $2 donation so Rebeca could have something to eat, how many people would say no?

Following the earthquake, the U.S. granted Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in the U.S. One of the arguments in favor of doing this was that remittances from Haitian workers in the U.S. support people in Haiti, and this support was even more needed now in the wake of the earthquake. Doesn't this logic also apply to increasing the wages of workers in Haiti supplying the U.S. consumer market? Wouldn't this be a straightforward way to get U.S. dollars into deserving hands close to the ground?

We have a principle in the U.S. - not always honored in practice - that if you work full-time, you ought to be able to feed and clothe yourself and put a roof over your head. This principle ought to apply to workers in Haiti who produce for the U.S. consumer market.

This is a policy that labor, aid and Haiti solidarity groups should be able to unite on. Labor wants to raise labor standards. Aid groups want trade to support development. These are two great tastes that would taste great together.

Establishing this policy would set a good precedent. U.S.-supported international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have long used their influence to obstruct government efforts to raise wages in countries like Haiti. But the IMF has recently reversed itself on other long-held dogmas - embracing capital controls and moderate inflation in developing countries, for example. If the IMF can re-think capital controls and moderate inflation, maybe it can re-think starvation wages.

Follow Robert Naiman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/naiman

MARCH 22: THUNDERSTORMS AND RAIN STRIKE FEAR INTO HAITI CAMPS, RED CROSS REPORT

2010-03-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

full report via
AMERICAN RED CROSS
Thunderstorms And Rain Strike Fear Into Haiti Camps
By Alex Wynter
in the Champs De Mars, Port-au-Prince

Monday, March 22, 2010 — Early morning in the Champ de Mars plaza, downtown Port-au-Prince, one of the five biggest of the improvised settlements housing Haiti’s acutely vulnerable homeless population.

Hundreds of soaked, sleepless residents who lost their houses in the January 12 earthquake are lining up in the fading drizzle for a distribution run by the U.S. military.

Spectacular thunderstorms over Port-au-Prince the previous evening drenched the city and the hundreds of camps that fill its open spaces and cling to its hillsides.

About twelve hours of virtually unbroken rain followed overnight.

The Champ de Mars, where an estimated 16,000 people cluster in a mishmash of shelters in front of the ruined presidential palace, has become the most emblematic of all the quake settlements.

The statues of the great figures of Haiti’s past—Tooussaint Louverture, Henri Christophe, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Alexandre Pétion, and the Marron inconnu—are still visible close up from the flimsy shelters of the people whose ancestors they helped liberate.

Filthy water
Across the paved plaza, the day after weather-watchers may judge the 2010 rainy season began, people are mopping up the filthy water that swept around their homes overnight—and into some.

There were no reports of casualties citywide; no major floods or landslides.

But across town at the Terrain Golf settlement—by far the biggest, housing nearly 40,000 displaced people—people were said to be frantically digging drainage channels with their bare hands.

All over Port-au-Prince, people in the improvised settlements adopted the now familiar tactic of standing up under their tarpaulins, clutching children and clothes and precious belongings as they waited for the deluge to end.

But a quick survey of several of the largest camps provided one small encouraging sign: the tarpaulins held. The ramshackle shelters did not collapse under the weight of water.

“As far as we know none of the tarps here gave way,” said Michel Louis, a civil engineer with the Haitian National Red Cross Society, who supervises humanitarian projects at the Automeca camp, near the Red Cross base.

Gable top
Most of the tarp shelters at Automeca, for one, are constructed correctly—with a gable top, not a flat one.

Louis is sloshing his way round the camp with Jean Gilardi, team leader of the British Red Cross mass sanitation Emergency Response Unit (ERU), which has been working at Automeca, home to nearly 10,000 people, since the start.

The pair wrench their feet out of the gluey mud with every step, but to the delight of both, their new latrines are also intact.

“When we first came to Automeca in the immediate aftermath of the quake, we put in 60 pit-latrines with pre-fab cubicles—standard practice in an emergency,” says Gilardi. “But they’re vulnerable to flooding.

“As the rainy season approached, we rushed to start replacing the pit latrines with small, buried septic tanks that are more or less flood-proof.

“Now we’ve got eight new flood-proof latrines in, and with any luck the other 50-odd will be replaced within a few weeks—building up to a total of a hundred.”

Shelters
The humanitarian community had been hoping a significant number of quake-affected people would be moved from the desperately overcrowded settlements ahead of the rainy season, which is usually dated from April 1.

It isn’t going to happen.

There has been some movement on the crucial land issue in recent weeks. Surveying work has begun at two of the five locations named by the government as resettlement sites.

Last Saturday saw the official opening of the first new transitional settlement for 1,400 people at Santo 17 in Croix des Bouquets, on land made available by the local authorities.

The Red Cross, meanwhile, is negotiating with mayors for agreement to start building emergency “core” shelters—12-square-metre wood-frame houses—at several small sites in Port-au-Prince.

Deadly flood
“Clearly we shared the hope that people could be moved in time,” said Iain Logan, head of operations for the global Red Cross network in Haiti.

“But as the Red Cross we have to stand ready to help people wherever they are—even if that means wading through mud to get to them.

“And we may have to do just that.”

Haiti has already seen one deadly flood this year after heavy rain swept through the western end of the southern promontory, leaving parts of the city of Les Cayes under five feet of water and claiming at least 12 lives.

Blocked storm drains and sewers were thought to have made those floods worse.

About the American Red Cross:
The American Red Cross shelters, feeds and provides emotional support to victims of disasters; supplies nearly half of the nation's blood; teaches lifesaving skills; provides international humanitarian aid; and supports military members and their families. The Red Cross is a charitable organization — not a government agency — and depends on volunteers and the generosity of the American public to perform its mission. For more information, please visit www.redcross.org or join our blog at http://blog.redcross.org.

MAR 22: CLINTON PUSHES TEXTILE INDUSTRY AND TRADE FOR HAITI RECOVERY, REUTERS

2010-03-22T19:00:00.000-07:00

REUTERS, Improved U.S. Terms For Haiti Textile Imports Sought

article details:

- Former President Bill Clinton is the UN's coordinator of relief efforts.

- He visited Haiti with ex-President George Bush on Monday.

- Clinton is seeking changes to U.S. trade laws to change the cap on Haiti textile imports.

- He wants to attract foreign investors to Haiti's apparel sector.

- Bill Clinton told Haiti's Preval ""We pledged to do what we could to get the changes adopted by Congress that would enable you to make maximum use of this law, and that I think could create more than 100,000 jobs in Haiti in short order."

related articles offering a different point of view on this economic recovery plan:

Mark Schuller via Huffington Post, Clearing The Rubble, Including The Old Plan For Haiti

Tope Folarin via Common Dreams, Sweatshops Won't Save Haiti

MAR 21: "THE LOST CHILDREN OF HAITI", 60 MINUTES

2010-03-21T23:05:00.000-07:00

Watch CBS News Videos Online

MAR 19: "WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME", RAIN HITS A CAMP OF 45,000 QUAKE SURVIVORS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

2010-03-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

article details

- 1.3 million people homeless

- rains starting to hit Haiti, causing swamping of camps wrecking makeshift tents and latrines

- disease outbreak looms due to lack of proper sanitation

- there is standing water and mud in massive camp sites

- for two months the Haitian government and the UN have not been able to secure relocation sites from the landowners of Haiti

full article via
ASSOCIATED PRESS / THE WASHINGTON POST
Heavy Rains Swamp Camps Holding Haiti's Homeless
By Mike Melia

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- One of the heaviest rainfalls since Haiti's Jan. 12 earthquake swamped homeless camps Friday, sweeping screaming residents into eddies of water, overflowing latrines and panicking thousands.

The overnight downpour sent water coursing down the slopes of a former golf course that now serves as a temporary home for about 45,000 people.

There were no reports of deaths in the camp, a town-size maze of blue, orange and silver tarps located behind the country club used by the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne as a forward-operating base.

But the deluge terrified families who just two months ago survived the collapse of their homes in the magnitude-7 earthquake and are now struggling to make do in tent-and-tarp camps that officials have repeatedly said must be relocated.

"I was on one side (of the tarp), the children were on the other side and I was trying to push the water out," Jackquine Exama, a 34-year-old mother of seven, said through tears.

"I'm not used to this," she said.

Aid workers said people were swept screaming into eddies of water and flows ripped down tents an Israeli aid group is using to teach school.

"They were crying. There was just fear down there. It was chaos," said Jim Wilson of the aid group Praecipio, who came running from his own shelter up the hill when he heard the screams.

After the sun rose Friday, people used sticks and their bare hands to dig drainage ditches around their tarps and shanties.

Marie Elba Sylvie, 50, could not decide whether it was worth repairing damage to her lean-to of scrap wood and plastic.

"It could be fixed but when it rains again it will be the same problem," said the 50-year-old mother of four.

Standing water and mud also pervaded a tarp-and-tent city on the outskirts of Cite Soleil, several miles away. Residents waded through the shallow flood collecting their belongings.

Officials know they must move many of the 1.3 million people displaced by the earthquake before the rainy season starts in earnest in April. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters at the golf-course camp Sunday that the people living there were in particular danger.

But after two months of searching and wrangling with landowners, the government has still not opened any of the five promised relocation sites that are better able to withstand rain and aftershocks on the capital's northeastern outskirts.

Aid groups are also struggling to open their own camps.

"It's been frustrating to us because we need to have those sites in order to build something ... better. Until we can do that people have no incentive to move," U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told The Associated Press during Ban's visit.

"We're running out of time, honestly," Holmes said.

---

Associated Press Writer Jonathan M. Katz and Associated Press Photographer Ramon Espinosa contributed to this report.

MAR 19: IT IS "TOO LATE"

2010-03-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

full article via
THE SYNDEY MORNING HERALD / AFP
Too Late To Avert Second Haiti Disaster

Despite billions of US dollars in pledges and an unprecedented humanitarian drive, it is likely too late to avert a second disaster in quake-hit Haiti, a top US aid co-ordinator has warned.

Tents and tarpaulins are simply not enough to protect tens of thousands of Haitians from the coming rains and hurricanes, and a new wave of quake survivors could perish in a second "catastrophe", InterAction chief Sam Worthington predicted.

"Having observed camps on very steep slopes and that you cannot simply relocate hundreds of thousands of people easily, we anticipate that the rainy season will lead, to a certain degree, to another catastrophe that despite the hard work of the international community will be hard to avoid," he told AFP.

"Deaths, landslides and so forth," he explained, adding: "What we can do is work with the UN to create shelters that people can find refuge in, but there simply isn't the time."

In Haiti for a week for meetings with top government officials, including President Rene Preval, Worthington is co-ordinating the massive US NGO effort but is realistic about what can be achieved.

"We're in a race against time and even though a large number of people will be moved, I do anticipate that, sadly, many will be affected by the fact that they are living in areas that are dangerous.

"One could get a tent, one could get plastic sheeting but to get people in temporary shelter in such a way that it will withstand a hurricane or rains and ultimately rebuild, we are talking about an effort that will take years."

Teams from the International Organisation for Migration are laboriously trawling hundreds of camps to register the particulars of each family, while other UN agencies draw up emergency plans for flood and hurricane prevention.

Some 218,000 Haitians are deemed to be in "red camps", those considered at gravest flood risk, and the race is on to find them alternative shelter before the rain and possibly calamitous landslides.

There have already been a few nights of torrential downpours in the past week and sustained rains could spell disaster in Port-au-Prince where countless people subsist in wretched conditions perched on treacherous slopes.

"Our community is talking about a second disaster happening when the rains hit," said Worthington. "I am not sure to what extent that can be avoided."

"Unfortunately, many of the camps are in areas that have no drainage whatsoever and many of the shelters are on slopes that are 20 degrees or steeper," he told AFP after a briefing at the UN logistics base.

The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti as dusk fell on January 12 was one of the worst natural disasters of modern times, if not the worst. It left at least 220,000 people dead and affected three million Haitians.

© 2010 AFP

MAR 17: PHOTOGRAPHY_"TENT CITY" BY LA TIMES

2010-03-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

With the rains approaching and threatening to bring even more tragedy to those living in the vast tent cities of Haiti, a link to the LA TIMES photography story from late January seems appropriate to post now.
A Haitian boy flies a kite above the Daihatsu camp, which is named for an adjoining car dealership. The tent city marches up a rocky, snake-infested hillside not far from the Port-au-Prince airport. Photograph by Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES TIMES, Audio Slide Show "Tent City"

MAR 17: STORM CLOUDS ON HAITI HORIZON

2010-03-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

full article via
COMMON DREAMS / TORONTO STAR
Storm Clouds On Haiti Horizon Threaten Earthquake Refugees
By Kenneth Kidd

PORT-AU-PRINCE – With the United Nations and aid agencies still scrambling to provide adequate shelter for those displaced by the earthquake, the potential for a second major crisis looms with the imminent arrival of torrential rains.

A woman stands next to makeshift tents 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. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) More than 200,000 people in Port-au-Prince are living in makeshift camps that sit on flood plains, ahead of a rainy season that typically begins in earnest in April.

But work only started Monday preparing the first of five new sites outside the city where those most at risk could be relocated.

And the Haitian government is still in negotiations to purchase or lease three of those sites from their private landowners, UN officials say.

It generally takes 4 to 6 weeks to prepare a new site, which includes setting up drainage and sanitation facilities.

"It's a huge challenge," says UN spokesperson Kristen Knutsen. "It's going to be a massive campaign."

The UN hopes to have the first new site ready by April 15.

In an average year, this part of Haiti gets close to 400 mm of rain during April and May.

The UN has identified 21 existing camps in the city that are at varying degrees of risk. No estimates were as yet available on how many people could be similarly vulnerable elsewhere in Haiti.

Some at-risk sites could be stabilized with berms and other ways of diverting floodwaters, allowing some or all of the inhabitants to stay if they wish, depending on the site.

Others have been deemed completely unsafe, but UN officials refuse to identify those sites – or the number of people affected – for fear of creating panic.

In total, the new camps outside the city will only have the capacity to take in about 100,000 people.

So the UN is also encouraging those in flood-threatened camps to consider other options. These include moving in with friends or relatives, or going back to the original site of their ruined homes and erecting new shelters there.

Yet there could be other complications.

Many of the concrete floodways that do exist within the city, ones aimed at carrying heavy rainwater safely away, are now filled with all manner of refuse as impromptu dumpsites.

The magnitude-7 quake hit Haiti Jan. 12.

© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2010

MAR 17: USNS COMFORT MAKES RETURN TO THE USA

2010-03-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

full article via

BALTIMORE SUN / AP
Hundreds of Navy personnel have disembarked from the hospital ship USNS Comfort in Norfolk, Va., as it returns from a seven-week mission treating earthquake victims in Haiti. The hospital ship arrived at Naval Station Norfolk on Saturday. It's scheduled to leave Thursday and arrive at its home port in Baltimore on Friday. Navy officials say 500 of the ship's 700 personnel disembarked over the weekend.

MAR 17: "A RACE AGAINST TIME" SAYS UN SEC-GEN BAN KI-MOON

2010-03-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

via DEMOCRACY NOW

statement from the head of the UN on Haiti's upcoming rainy season:

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

“So far, we have distributed tents and tarpaulins to nearly 700,000 people among 1.3 million displaced persons. We will reach the rest by the end of next month. We have also identified five alternative sites around the capital, where we can move IDPs and where they will be safer and better cared for. But let me be clear, we are in a race against time.”

MAR 16: UN BEGINS EFFORT TO MOVE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS AHEAD OF RAIN, WASHINGTON POST

2010-03-16T22:35:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON POST, U.N. And Haitian Government To Begin Campaign To House Homeless Before Rain Season

MAR 16: "NEWS FILLED WITH FEAR AND DESPAIR", WORLDPRESS ON HAITI'S URGENT SITUATION TWO MONTHS AFTER JAN 12

2010-03-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

article stats:
- 230,000 deaths from the earthquake.
- 1.2 million people homeless
- 280,000 orphans before the quake with 20,000 additional after
- 6,000 to 8,000 lost limbs from the quake, number could rise due to lack of post-op care
- 700 teachers, staff and principals were killed, the education system is in collapse
- only half of all Haitians will see the inside of a classroom

full article via
WORLDPRESS
Haiti's Rising Urgency
By Teri Schure

Two months after a 7.3 magnitude quake struck Haiti on January 12, leaving approximately 230,000 people dead and more than 1.2 million people homeless, there are many questions. How are the people coping? Is the aid getting through? Where will Haiti's displaced people find new homes, and how fast will they get there?

In order to get some answers, I combed through the international press, and I was dismayed at the lack of updated information. After reaching out to Worldpress readers through Twitter, asking for Haiti updates, I received hundreds of emails from Haitians and visitors to the country, and they all expressed that the situation in Haiti grows more urgent with each passing day.

While some of the emails were full of hope, many were full of fear and despair. One aid worker stressed the dire need for humanitarian help, especially as seasonal rains could threaten those left homeless with an outbreak of disease.

An orphanage worker said that there were 280,000 orphans before the disaster struck, and now an estimated 20,000 or more since. More than two months later, thousands of children are still separated from their parents. Aid is still desperately needed in some of the more remote areas in Haiti, and one email mentioned that machete-armed gangs are still lurking about.
In early March, the Batey Relief Alliance sent a team of dental and medical specialists from the United States to barely accessible communities like Anse-a-Pitre to deliver much-needed dental and medical care to children and their families living in horrendous conditions. Many Haitians are living in inaccessible communities and are completely isolated from medical services and international aid.

The emails from and about amputees were the hardest to read. According to one, between 6,000 and 8,000 people have lost limbs, and the numbers continue to grow as people suffer untreated infections. Thousands more suffered complicated fractures, some of which could turn into amputations if not managed properly.

A recent amputee was full of fear because the disabled are often treated as pariahs and isolated from society in Haiti. "Disabilities are ridiculed and thought of as a curse," she wrote.

One man said that in Haiti three out of four people are unemployed, and the work that does exist requires physical labor, making the situation very scary for him. He said that he couldn't get work when he had two legs, so how would he survive with just one? "You are a not a person if you are handicapped," he wrote.

Haiti, a country of 9 million that had limited capacity to treat an estimated 800,000 disabled people before the quake, lost two of its three prosthetics labs when the buildings were destroyed or damaged. A smaller lab remains in the south, but it desperately needs materials to make prosthetic devices.

Many amputees remain in fly-swarming hospital tents, and those who have been discharged have little hope, with no rehabilitation facilities, few physical therapists, and no chance of getting a prosthesis. A scant supply of crutches, canes and wheelchairs are trickling in through donations, but there are few paved roads, making navigating a wheelchair nearly impossible.

Michel Pean, Haiti's secretary of state for the integration of the disabled, recently said that Haiti's disabled—about 8 percent of the population even before the quake—had long been treated as second-class citizens, but the government has recently taken legal steps to recognize their rights and opened offices to serve them in the countryside. Ideally, Pean said, post-earthquake reconstruction could provide the impetus to make Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, more accessible to the disabled and create a national institute for rehabilitation.

For the moment, the focus is on making sure the thousands who underwent lifesaving amputations have a future.
"The situation for newly disabled persons is very delicate," Pean said. "They urgently need not only medical care, but food and a place to live. Also, we cannot forget those disabled before the disaster who, because of their handicap, are having trouble getting access to humanitarian aid."

"Haiti is trying to go back to normality, but several years will pass before everything goes back to the way it was before January 12," one aid worker wrote. "And excuse my negativity, but the way the Haitians lived before January 12 shouldn't really be considered normal."

Thanks to international aid, thousands of families have received tarps or tents that give them shelter, but it is not nearly enough given the huge demand, and many men and women wander around the city looking for wood, brass or nylon to build weak living structures they sadly call home. Families who aren't as lucky to find building materials simply form tents out of bed sheets.

Almost all the capital's parks, soccer fields, school yards and even a country-club golf course in suburban Pétionville are packed with people living in flimsy structures under terrible conditions. They have no water, electricity or a sanitation system that could prevent the spread of epidemics.

Haiti's inhabitants, as well as its authorities, are more concerned about the upcoming hurricane season, which begins on June 1, than rain, since none of the provisional settlements have conditions to withstand the strong winds of a hurricane. Despite the efforts of the international community, thousands of Haitians will have no shelter during the hurricane season.

Around 200,000 tents have been delivered in Haiti, and the number might reach 240,000, but those shelters are too weak to deal with tropical cyclones. The massive distribution of tarps—and to a much lesser extent, tents—has reached 53 percent of the 1.3 million people in need of shelter, according to a March 11 U.N. report.

Educators say that classes do not have a set date to begin. They were supposed to start by April, which would be almost impossible since more than 80 percent of the schools in the earthquake zone were destroyed or severely damaged. Nearly 4,000 students and more than 700 teachers, principals and staff were killed during afternoon classes. All that's left of the Ministry of Education's main building is a crater filled with torn workbooks and lost teachers' ID cards.

A petition has been delivered to President Preval demanding that schools reopen immediately, be they in tents, temporary buildings or other makeshift facilities. But others are urging caution before rushing back into a system that never really worked in the first place. The problems are monumental: Just one in 10 Haitian teachers is a qualified educator, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, and a third have not even completed ninth grade.

The government is unable to support more than a handful of schools, leaving the system dominated by fly-by-night, for-profit storefront schools whose onerous fees and other costs keep half of Haiti's children from enrolling at any given time. Wealthy Haitians and foreigners opt out entirely, putting their children in upscale schools that cost some $8,000 per year—more than most Haitians will spend on food and basic necessities in 20 years.

Buildings were so unsafe that one school collapsed on its own in 2008, killing 100 students and adults. Two months after the earthquake, Port-au-Prince still has thousands of constructions that are partly destroyed or about to roll down the hillsides.
Another devastating reality is that Haiti's best and brightest were lost in the earthquake. They were the educated few of Haiti, an up-and-coming generation of nurses, technicians, office managers and college students. These people kept the books, educated the young, fixed the computers and were an integral part of building up Haiti. Now they're gone, just when their struggling country needs them most. Because the earthquake struck just before 5:00 pm, it annihilated office buildings and disproportionately killed the young professionals who were working in them. "So many of those bright young people who were going the extra mile to make Haiti work were crushed at their desks," a nurse wrote me.

"It is a generation that decided not to leave the country. They chose to work for the country," said Dieusibon Pierre-Merite, a Haitian sociologist with a United Nations anti-gang program that lost several staffers in the quake. "They are the ones who died." It will impact our culture, the future of Haiti."

The list of those lost is long. It includes judges who investigated violations of law in a country where street justice still rules; the Foreign Ministry's point man on relations with the neighboring Dominican Republic; at least 10 agronomists working at the agricultural ministry to restore Haiti's farm sector; and three of Haiti's leading women's rights advocates, Magalie Marcelin, Myriam Merlet and Anne Marie Coriolan.

Preparations for the next disaster will have to go on without Ginna Porcena, the dynamic director of the National Geospatial Institute, who was part of a group of scientists who wanted to establish seismology stations in Haiti. The earthquake also killed many foreign aid workers and businesspeople who cared deeply about Haiti and would have been the first to pitch in after the disaster. The United Nations lost 101 staffers, including the mission's top two officials.

Compounding the loss of Haiti's best and brightest is a quickening brain drain, as people with the ability and means to leave are abandoning the ravaged country. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told The Associated Press he has watched with dismay as educated youths boarded planes to the United States and elsewhere. They leave because Haiti, always a difficult place to live, became impossible after the quake, he said.

"I was looking at their faces: They were escaping a country and they had no intention to go back," Bellerive said. "I feel love for the people that have lost family ... but I believe it's even harder for the country to see living people that could do so much to rebuild Haiti, leaving Haiti."

Only half of Haitians ever see the inside of a classroom, and only 2 percent complete high school, according to UNICEF.
Haiti has gone through such losses of talent before, usually in times of political upheaval. Many fled or were killed under the father-and-son Duvalier dictatorships from 1957 to 1986. People also escaped reprisals under the U.S.-backed junta of General Raoul Cedras in the early 1990s, under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and in the violent chaos that followed Aristide's 2004 ouster.

But the losses this time are far more significant. The destruction was so widespread and instantaneous—gutting the capital and its institutions at precisely the moment when help, guidance and new ideas were most needed—that the absence will be felt for decades.

One email asked if I knew what preparations would be made to arrange a presidential contest before President Préval's term expires early next year. Most if not all polling stations in the quake zone were damaged or destroyed, and the hundreds of thousands of voters who were not killed were displaced or left without ID cards.

Most of the emails I received contained more questions than updates. Who will take care of the orphaned children? Where will Haitians live? When will the children be able to go back to school? What will happen to the amputees? Is the departure of U.S. troops a sign of dwindling international interest in the plight of the Haitian people? With each week, and a looming spring rainy season that could bring devastating flooding to low-lying camps, the answers to those questions grow more urgent.

Ms. Teri Schure is the founder of Worldpress.org, lectures on issues pertaining to publishing, and is a consultant in the magazine, web development and marketing industries.

MAR 16: HAITI STILL SUFFERS WHEN CAMERAS ARE GONE, CBS NEWS

2010-03-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

CBS NEWS, Haiti Still Suffers When Cameras Are Gone

MAR 15: SEAN PENN AND HIS NEW AID ORGANIZATION ON THE GROUND IN HAITI SINCE JANUARY

2010-03-15T22:10:00.000-07:00

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (l.) met with Sean Penn during a visit to a makeshift camp for earthquake survivors set up at the Petionville Golf Club in Port-au-Prince.
Photograph by Paris/Getty

full article via
NY DAILY NEWS / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sean Penn In Haiti Since January Helping Earthquake Victims: "The Efforts Have Been Extraordinary"

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Look closely at the foreigners buzzing around a hospital tent above one of Haiti's biggest earthquake-refugee camps and a face stands out: There, carrying the box of supplies, that's Sean Penn.

Now he's guiding a Haitian girl to waiting doctors. Now he's lobbying the chief of U.N. peacekeeping operations to provide better security for the camp's 45,000 people. And now he's talking to the press.

"These people are going to have nowhere to go, by and large, in the rainy season," the Oscar-winning actor told The Associated Press. "The efforts that we've seen ... have been extraordinary - down the line. But this is an impossible kind of situation."

The 49-year-old actor came to Haiti about a week after the Jan. 12 quake killed a government-estimated 230,000 people and made 1.3 million homeless. He's left just a a few times since - mostly for Haiti-related meetings, he said, and to present the Oscar for best actress - and doesn't plan to leave again until mid-April.

His blue-shirted workers with the newly formed Jenkins-Penn Haiti Relief Organization provide medical care, water filters and food. On Sunday, they opened a health clinic for mothers and victims of a growing sexual assault epidemic.

"As long as this camp is here, we'll stay here. When this camp's not here anymore then we'll have to be where we are accessible to people," Penn said.

The ridge where the group is based is a short but taxing walk uphill from an increasingly fetid sprawl of makeshift tarp-and-tent homes. Thousands of families came to the valley golf course in the days after the quake, following the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division and its food distributions onto the steep country club grounds.

The group got a major boost Sunday in a visit by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He toured the facilities with Penn and actress-turned-aid worker Maria Bello - best known among the thinning crowd of U.S. soldiers for her turn in "Coyote Ugly."

Penn had never been to Haiti before - "It was just, you know, I saw ten minutes of news and we started organizing," he said. - but after two months he talks like a veteran volunteer.

"I don't think that anybody who hasn't been in places like this really understands what poverty is, and what a real lack of infrastructure is," he said.

But he speaks more freely than most aid workers do, decrying disaster profiteers and corrupt local officials who siphon aid, calling for more floored tents to help families at risk for disease and floods, and warning that recent outbursts of violence in the camp could be signs of rising tension.

When a Haitian reporter walks up and asks him about his personal accomplishments in Haiti, the actor cringes.

"What have I been doing? Well, I've spent the last 20 minutes talking to you."

He turns around, and goes back to work.

Donate to Sean Penn's J-P HRO at www.BeatTheRain.org

MAR 15: "THEY ARE SWEATSHOPS AND NOTHING MORE", CLINTON'S ECONOMIC RECOVERY PLAN FOR HAITI AND THE ROLE OF CHEAP LABOR

2010-03-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

full article via
COMMON DREAMS
Sweatshops Won't Save Haiti
By Tope Folarin

The United Nations will host a Haiti donors' conference at the end of March.

This conference will be quite different from last year's event, of course, coming as it does on the heels of the worst earthquake to strike Haiti in two centuries. An agenda has already begun to take shape: It's already clear that a future Haiti must be populated with environmentally sustainable, earthquake-resistant buildings, for example, and it's also clear that the international community must do something to ease Haiti's massive debt burden.

Former President Bill Clinton, currently serving as the UN's envoy to Haiti, and economist Paul Collier have another idea that could prove disastrous. They think Haiti needs to leverage its "cheap labor."

In other words, they think Haiti will solve its problems by opening up more sweatshops.

Of course Clinton and Collier don't call them sweatshops. They talk about "garment factories" or "manufacturing centers" or simply "workshops," but they are sweatshops and nothing more.

For Haiti to join the ranks of developed nations, they argue, Haitians must first work as many hours as possible for paltry wages so that their economy can grow.

Congress seems to agree. It has passed several bills that provide Haitian garment-makers preferential access to American consumers. According to conventional knowledge, Haiti was on the road to economic success--as a result of these legislative reforms--before the earthquake. Now, the logic goes, Haitians must rebuild their collapsed "workshops" and produce as many cheap T-shirts as possible.

All this ignores the most important point: sweatshop labor's inherent inhumanity. Sweatshop labor proponents have never worked in the conditions they so enthusiastically endorse for others. When advocating such solutions, they often offer compelling numbers as proof of their effectiveness. But what about the human costs: the extra hours workers spend away from their families, the risk of injury that accompanies repetitive movements, and the loss of morale as some boss demands that you produce even more?

In Haiti, there are a few plausible alternatives to sweatshop labor. In the lead-up to last year's donors' conference, progressive Haitian civil society organizations suggested a development program that focuses on local production and agriculture. They argued, convincingly, that the benefits from sweatshop labor often end up somewhere else, since the clothes are constructed on-site; the material for the clothes are shipped in, and the clothes are shipped out upon completion.

A focus on locally produced goods, however, would have the opposite effect. Haitian entrepreneurs would produce according to Haitian needs, and every part of the manufacturing process--from the development of materials to the production of goods--would take place in Haiti and benefit Haitians.

In addition, building up the capacity of Haitian farmers is crucial in the coming months and years. Haiti has been dependent on food aid for many years now, and a national program that focused on sustainable agriculture would not only have the effect of providing a livelihood and locally produced food for countless Haitians, it would also allow Haiti to address the environmental degradation that has crippled its economy for generations.

The link between these two suggestions is infrastructure development. Better roads and better transportation generally mean a much more stable and efficient economy.

All three of these proposals would require funding from the international community and expertise from abroad as well. All three proposals, if enacted, would benefit Haitians enormously.

The upcoming donors' conference is an incredibly important forum. We have an opportunity to help Haitians rebuild in a manner that simultaneously respects their humanity and enables them to become more productive.

We have an opportunity to heed the voices of concerned and knowledgeable Haitians. Now isn't the time to subsidize foreign investors' sweatshops.

Distributed by Minuteman Media
Tope Folarin is the 2010 Carol Jean and Edward F. Newman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a community of public scholars and organizers linking peace, justice, and the environment in the U.S. and globally. www.ips-dc.org

MAR 12: THE US ROLE IN HAITI, A VIEW FROM THE LEFT

2010-03-12T14:15:00.000-08:00

WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE, Haitian President At White House: US Military Occupation To Continue

MAR 12: KIDNAPPED AID WORKERS RELEASED, AP

2010-03-12T12:45:00.000-08:00

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Released Aid Workers In Haiti Are Czech, Belgian

MAR 11: "THE FAILURES OF THE RELIEF EFFORT ARE HEARTBREAKING", NY TIMES EDITORIAL ON HAITI TWO MONTHS AFTER QUAKE

2010-03-11T22:05:00.000-08:00

full article via

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Haiti, Two Months Later

With every day that passes in the mud and rubble of Haiti, the failures of the relief effort are heartbreaking. There are four main strands to the campaign to make sure 1.2 million homeless people are sheltered and safe as the weather turns fierce. All are inadequate.

THE MAJOR PLAYERS The United Nations and foreign countries and aid organizations have dispatched tents, tarps, food, water, medicine and doctors, as they should. They have done a lot of good, particularly the United States, which rushed supplies, a troop force that peaked at about 20,000 and a hospital ship. Many lives were saved. After meeting with Haiti’s president, René Préval, this week, President Obama pledged continued aid.

But after nearly two months, it’s not enough. Only half of those displaced have received even the crudest means of emergency shelter: plastic tarps and tents that will hardly protect them when floods start in earnest next month, and the hurricanes come in June. In hundreds of crowded settlements around the country, like the ones sheltering more than 600,000 in Port-au-Prince, food, water, medical care and security remain spotty.

Large swaths of the earthquake zone remain untouched by aid. They are choking in rubble, and trucks and volunteers have barely begun to scratch out safe places in the wreckage for people to live.

Relief agencies have overcome staggering obstacles, starting with the fact that the quake demolished the United Nations mission, killing much of its leadership and employees. The United Nations is in high gear now, but it has been rightly criticized for disorganization. Last month, in a scathing e-mail message, the emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations, John Holmes, blasted his colleagues for having been too slow to step up to the challenge. Weeks after the disaster, he said, several of the agency “clusters” in charge of handling needs like food and shelter had not even developed a basic overview of what they had to do, much less a plan.

THE HAITIAN GOVERNMENT The quake ruined the presidential palace and the best managers and workers were still on the job when the tremors hit. President Préval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive have not been able to resume strong or even visible leadership.

The government has not made decisions or has made confusing ones. It has, for instance, refused to allow undamaged or lightly damaged schools to reopen with a full curriculum until all schools can reopen — letting children languish. Mr. Préval was visible at the White House on Wednesday, but in Haiti the question “Where is Préval?” draws a shake of the head.

THE N.G.O.’S Existing charity mechanisms have been revved up to try to match the staggering scale of the earthquake, and new ones are being invented. The big multinational nongovernmental organizations are providing vital support to the United Nations.

But there are thousands of others, like the small rural mission churches and other groups that right now are offering just pinpricks of relief.

THE PEOPLE Haitians are eager to help themselves. Refugees are forming settlement councils and electing representatives to collaborate with the nongovernmental organizations. They are building homes themselves, clearing rubble themselves, burying the dead themselves, organizing security brigades themselves. But they are as overmatched as everyone else by the scale of the disaster.

There is a burning need to tap the energies of Haitians — not just the devastated national government. That means at the grass-roots, church, business and neighborhood groups that know the country, speak its languages, and are deeply committed to its rebirth.

Efforts to do so have been negligible so far. A report by Refugees International, an advocacy group in Washington, says that Haitians have been excluded from major planning at the United Nations compound because they don’t know about meetings, aren’t allowed in or don’t have the staff to send. The United Nations Development Program has hired more than 70,000 Haitians to clean debris. Much more is needed.

Haiti should be able to count on American technical expertise, security and money, especially as energy shifts to rebuilding. Everyone should keep improving basic efforts to keep refugees safe and in good health. But, ultimately, it is the United Nations that must take responsibility to lead and coordinate the relief efforts.

MAR 11: HAITI AND HELP FROM THE DIASPORA, NY TIMES

2010-03-11T12:45:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK TIMES, For Haitian, Mission Is To Mend Fences With Diaspora And Streamline Aid

MAR 06: NY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHY_HAITI'S SCHOOL CHILDREN

2010-03-06T22:55:00.000-08:00

Haitian children are languishing in camps or working in menial jobs. Markeny Saint Valin, 10, with his grandmother, Luciene St. Louis, washing clothes in Port-au-Prince.
Photograph by Lynsey Addario / The New York Times

Basing estimates on talks with government officials, Unicef said that more than 3,000 school buildings had been destroyed or damaged. Jimmy Pierre Louis, 10, carrying aluminum chairs from a collapsed building in Port-au-Prince. Photograph by Todd Heisler / The New York Times

Children attending a math class at a camp in Port-au-Prince. Photograph by Lynsey Addario / The New York Times

Full photography story:

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Among The Ruins, Education Is Also Lost

MAR 06: THE COLLAPSE OF HAITI'S EDUCATION SYSTEM, NY TIMES

2010-03-06T22:45:00.000-08:00

THE NEW YORK TIMES, With Haitian Schools In Ruins, Children In Limbo

Story details:
- Children make up 45 percent of Haiti's population.
- Haiti needs $2 billion over the next five years to rebuild its education system.
- 3,000 schools in the earthquake zone have been destroyed.
- Even before the JAN 12 quake, only about half of Haiti's school-age children were enrolled in classes.

After Haiti’s quake: children in Pétionville danced at a day care program run by the French Red Cross. Photograph by Todd Heisler / The New York Times

full article and photography via

THE NEW YORK TIMES
With Haitian Schools In Ruins, Children In Limbo
By Simon Romero

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Thousands of schools in and around this devastated capital could remain closed for months or never reopen, according to Haitian and United Nations education officials. That leaves vast numbers of children languishing in camps or working in menial jobs as they struggle to survive.

Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, only about half of Haiti’s school-age children were enrolled in classes, a glaring symbol of the nation’s poverty.

Unicef, basing its estimates on talks with government officials, said that more than 3,000 school buildings in the earthquake zone had been destroyed or damaged. Hundreds of teachers and thousands of students were killed, and officials are questioning the safety of the remaining buildings after violent aftershocks in recent weeks, making the goal of Haitian education officials to reopen many schools by April 1 seem increasingly remote.

“We have six engineers in the Education Ministry to survey more than 10,000 schools to see if they’re safe,” said Charles Tardieu, a former education minister who is pushing for schools to reopen in tent camps. “Let’s face the reality that many schools are never going to be used again, and that we urgently need other ways to revive the system,” he said.

With their options limited, thousands of children are toiling on this city’s streets instead of going to school. Marckin Sainvalier, 10, helped his grandmother wash clothes one recent morning alongside the rubble of Rue Bonne-Foi in the central commercial district. As for school, “that was before the earthquake,” he said, explaining that his mother left him in his grandmother’s care in the chaotic days after the quake struck. “A lot has happened since then.”

On another street in the commercial district, Dieuvenson Semervil, 12, scavenged for padlocks in a collapsed hardware store. Before the quake, Dieuvenson said, he dreamed of becoming a mechanic. A body decomposed next to him to as he picked through the rubble. Near the ruins of the partly destroyed Lycée Alexandre Pétion, one of the city’s public schools, Samanta Louis, 11, swept the sidewalk, work she said helped support her nine siblings and parents who lived in the tent camp of Champs de Mars. A former student at the Lycée, Jean Pierre Lestin, 15, scavenged brick from a collapsed wall to sell. “I would like to be an engineer someday,” he said.

Children staying in the camps face trials beyond laboring in the streets. Health workers in the camps are reporting a rising number of young rape victims, including girls as young as 12. Alison Thompson, an Australian nurse and documentary director who volunteers at a tent clinic on the grounds of the Pétionville Club, said she had cared for a 14-year-old girl who was raped recently in the camp.

“The entire structure of the lives of these children has been upended, and now they’re dealing with the predators living next to them,” Ms. Thompson said.

The government here has recognized the urgency of reopening schools to provide some structure to those picking up the pieces of their lives. But its efforts to do so have faltered. Officials declared schools open in unaffected areas as of Feb. 1; some students have trickled into those schools, but many have not, say education specialists.

Here in the capital, symbols of the devastated education system lie scattered throughout the city. Metal scavengers are still picking through the wrecked Collège du Canapé-Vert, where as many as 300 students studying to become teachers died in the earthquake.

Foreign aid groups here say that Haiti differs from other poor nations recently struck by natural disasters, like Pakistan and Bangladesh, in that the quake gutted the education system of the capital in a highly centralized country. In New Orleans, more than half of the public schools remained shut a year after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, said Marcelo Cabral, an education specialist with the Inter-American Development Bank.

Haiti’s education system was already dysfunctional before the earthquake. Only about 20 percent of schools were public, with the rest highly expensive for the poor. Even in public schools, poor families struggled to pay for uniforms, textbooks and supplies. While other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean spend about 5 percent of their gross domestic product on education, Haiti was spending just 2 percent, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

“The quality of education was very low, with about a third of teachers having nine years of education at best,” Mr. Cabral said in an interview here, after a recent meeting with Haitian officials in an attempt to come up with a plan to reopen schools. Mr. Cabral said the Inter-American Development Bank estimated that Haiti needed $2 billion over the next five years to rebuild its education system.

Children make up about 45 percent of Haiti’s population, and they are flooding the camps. Hundreds of children milled about the latrines of a camp at the prime minister’s office complex one day at the end of last month. “I have nothing to do,” said Belle-Fleur Merline, 11, who lives at the camp with her father and two siblings.

Placid Francoise, 17, said she had hoped to become a nurse before the earthquake destroyed her family’s home and forced them into a camp in front of the ruins of the presidential palace. Her mother, a street vendor, had used her meager savings to pay Ms. Francoise’s tuition at the Frères Monfort school.

Now Ms. Francoise lives in a one-room shack with more than a dozen relatives. She said she had no idea when she would return to school. “I work for my mother each day now, so that we may eat,” she said, pointing to the bags of charcoal they sell in front of their hovel.

Some educators and relief officials are not waiting for the government to act, deciding to open their own schools on a piecemeal basis in some camps.

Alzire Rocourt, a headmaster at a private school here before the earthquake, opened a school last month under tents donated by the Israeli Army in the sprawling Pétionville Club camp. She teaches reading, math and geography. The students play volleyball on the dirt outside during recess. And they sing, with vigor, Creole folk songs.

“Apran yon ak lot,” the children sang, beaming. “Learning together.”

“Renmen yon ak lot,” they ended. “It means, ‘Loving each other,’ ” Ms. Rocourt said.

She smiled, too, until she recalled how much more needed to be done. Of the more than 25,000 children living in the Pétionville camp, just 260 are in her school.

MAR 4: SEAN PENN LEADS BEAT THE RAIN CAMPAIGN, URGENT CALL FOR RELOCATION, SHELTER AND SERVICES

2010-03-04T01:05:00.000-08:00

Jenkins-Penn Haitian Relief Organization

MAR 4: VIDEO DETAILING EFFORTS OF HEALING HANDS FOR HAITI

2010-03-04T00:30:00.000-08:00

Healing Hands For Haiti

MAR 3: RESETTLEMENT EFFORTS BY THE RED CROSS IN REUTERS REPORT

2010-03-03T23:00:00.000-08:00

REUTERS, International Federation Of Red Cross 'Decongests' Haiti Camp

MAR 3: "I JUST HOPE TO FIND SOME WAY OF SURVIVING", THE TIMES UK REPORTS ON THE NEEDS AND CHALLENGES FACING HAITIAN AMPUTEES

2010-03-03T16:00:00.000-08:00

full article via

THE TIMES ONLINE UK

Dancer Who Lost Her Leg In Haiti Earthquake: ‘I Want To Dance Again’
In the chaos of Haiti, our writer came across a dancer whose leg was amputated after her home collapsed. Could she be a symbol of hope for the nation’s recovery?
By Will Pavia, THE TIMES

He had spent all day asking questions in Creole and turning the answers into English. They were mostly the same questions: How did you lose your leg? Is your house still standing? What will you do now? But there came a moment when our translator stopped mid-sentence and refused to continue.

He was a French teacher from a secondary school in Port-au-Prince: he had a quiet, vaguely paternal, manner and his ability to remain calm in fraught situations had proved invaluable again and again.

Our short interview with Fabienne Jean, a dancer from the Haitian national theatre, was the only time I saw him lose his temper.

Jean, 31, is quite famous in Haiti: he had seen her in some big shows and in television commercials for the mobile-phone company Voila. We found her stretched out on a mattress on the concrete floor of a primary school classroom that was serving as an overflow ward for the city hospitals.

The doctors who amputated her right leg below the knee said that she had borne the pain with great dignity and expressed a determination to dance again. She was trying to remain upbeat when we found her, but she had lost her leg, her home had fallen down, her parents had lost their house too, she had nowhere to go and no way to get there.

As we spoke, a nurse came to change the dressing on her stump and she lent back on the mattress and breathed in sharply, her eyelids fluttering. Did she still hope to dance again? “Yes,” she said. “If it’s possible. But I don’t know if it is.”

How difficult would it be to live with this kind of disability in a country such as Haiti?

This was the question our translator could not stand.

“Don’t talk to her about these things!” he shouted, shaking his head at me. “Don’t talk to her about Haiti. They can do nothing for her here. Talk about something else. Please!” There was an awkward silence, in which I tried to think of something else to say. Then Jean started talking. “She says she wants to know if there is anything you can say or do to help her situation,” said our translator, resuming normal service once more.

The interview was proceeding like a three-person polka: it was no longer clear who was leading or where we were going. But there was something I could say.

I know dancers who have suffered crippling injuries and resumed their careers and I know dancers who were born with physical or learning disabilities who have become professional dancers, breaking various preconceptions along the way.

My brother was born with Down’s syndrome. He began dancing at an early age, choreographing routines culled from Take That videos and performing them on the living-room rug with all the solemnity of Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. He now plays to packed theatres, touring the world with a company of able-bodied and disabled dancers called StopGap.

Among them is Laura Jones, who was starting out as a dancer when she suffered a spinal bleed. She learnt to dance again: she was the first person in a wheelchair to gain a dance A level.

I told Jean about David Toole, one of StopGap’s directors, a performer who continues to astonish audiences all over the world. Toole has no legs: he springs out of his wheelchair and dances on the palms of his hands. His career began with Candoco, a company founded by Celeste Dandeker in 1991. Dandeker, a leading light in contemporary dance, had broken her spine while performing a flip on stage. Her company blazed a trail for disabled dancers from the niche “haven’t they done well?” sphere of community projects into the mainstream of professional dance.

This was what Haiti needed, I said, crouching beside Jean’s mattress. If someone such as her could return to the stage, she could show people what was possible. There is a new generation of amputees, some 3,000 of them. She could help to prevent them from being stigmatised — she could be the face of Haiti’s recovery.

I was getting carried away, of course. Dandeker took years to return to dance, Jones needed a year of physiotherapy, both spoke of the crushing sense of grief that they felt for the body they had lost.

“I had to relearn everything,” Jones said. “And you are putting yourself in a position where you can see what other people are capable of — things that you were once capable of.”

And she was living in Berkshire, not Port-au-Prince. Jean’s aspirations at that moment were the same as those of the amputees on the surrounding mattresses. “I just hope to find some way of surviving,” she said. “I’ve got no house, nothing.”

She hoped to get a prosthetic limb, but she was not particularly confident that this would happen. Beside her lay Myrlene Samedi, 29, a student of computer science. “They promised her another leg,” said her husband, Polycarpe Schiller, 27. “I think this will be a difficult thing in Haiti.”

Conflicting expectations over what happens next for Haiti’s amputees were colliding in the city’s operating rooms.

That same day in the general hospital, Christopher Bulstrode, a trauma surgeon from Oxford flown in by Médecins du Monde, was cleaning the stump of the left leg of a 16-year-old girl. “This can’t take an artificial limb,” he said. “We need a plastic surgeon to do a skin graft, or we need to re-amputate higher up. If one of my doctors in Oxford did that I would have his guts for garters.”

The professor had just had a furious argument with a Haitian doctor. “He had left the amputation wide open with the bone showing. I said you can’t do that. He said: ‘We can, she’s never going to walk on it again’.”

In Britain, surgeons would leave a large flap of skin to be folded over the stump. “We put on prosthetics 24 hours afterwards, which is very important psychologically speaking,” he said. “We say let’s get you up and moving and signed up for the ParaOlympics. But this kind of work costs thousands of dollars per limb. This Haitian doctor was saying: ‘You’re in Haiti now chum.’ The subtext was: ‘You guys are going to get bored and go home.’ We have a huge battle on our hands because here, if you lose a limb, people think: ‘That’s it for you’.”

I spoke to Bulstrode again this week. “After I spoke to you I stormed back to Médecins du Monde and said: ‘There is no point in closing stumps if we don’t get the second phase going’,” he said.

He is back in Oxford now, but he believes the message got through. Plastic surgeons arrived in Port-au-Prince last week. Handicap International advertised for 30 British physiotherapists and the charity is opening a prosthetics factory in Haiti that it hopes to staff with amputees. I spoke to Jean down a crackly phone line on Monday evening: she said that she was getting about on crutches, and her situation was “bad”. Would she get a prosthetic? “I think there is no chance,” she said.

I am a little more hopeful. I have passed on her number to Handicap International, and to StopGap and Candoco. Both dance groups said that they would be keen to work with her: both work on similar projects around the world.

StopGap is now in Albania, helping to establish dance projects, while Stine Pedro, artistic director of Candoco, is corresponding with Liu Yan, an acclaimed Chinese classical dancer who was paralysed by a fall as she rehearsed her solo role in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. She is starting to dance again.

“We are always looking for dancers,” said Pedro. “Though we are not the national ballet. It’s a big jump from being a dancer at a big institution to possibly coming to work for us.”

Jean has coped with larger reversals. She was watching television when her house fell down with her inside it. She was carried into the general hospital, where amputees were sedated with ketamine, the horse tranquiliser.

“It gives them the most horrible nightmares afterwards,” Bulstrode said, and things did not look that rosy when they woke up. There were no painkillers in the tents that passed for wards. Some were given midazolam, otherwise known as a date-rape drug, so that even if they were awake during operations they would not remember anything about it.

Now they are negotiating a ruined city on crutches: it almost seems perverse to worry about whether one of them will dance again. The British Council felt it was too soon to run a dance project in a city where “basic survival is still the priority”. It is probably right.

But I hope something can be done for Fabienne Jean. I remember squatting beside her mattress, after the translator’s outburst and my speech about people in other countries who danced in wheelchairs. She pulled out pictures of herself in all her glory, she sat up, she seemed happy for a moment. I hope that she will find a way back to the stage.

MAR 3: "SUDDENLY THE STRANGER HAS BECOME OUR NEIGHBOR", CHICAGO AREA SCHOOL CHILDREN RAISE MONEY FOR RED CROSS AND DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

2010-03-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

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THE BEACON NEWS

Students Learn Lifelong Lessons By Aiding Haiti Quake Victims
When School District 129 students heard about the devastating January earthquake in Haiti, they were alarmed and concerned. Their next reaction was to help.

Freeman Elementary students began to raise money for the American Red Cross by selling cookies. Jewel Middle School students set about selling paper bricks and raised $1,200 for Doctors without Borders. Students became involved across the district, and some learned lifelong lessons.

"I believe that students came away with a real understanding of the connections we have with our brothers and sisters all over the world," said Layla Groleau, a teacher at Washington Middle School. "Suddenly, the stranger has become our neighbor. Our self-centered bubble has popped, and we have begun to reach out, both emotionally and financially, to those in need."

Washington Middle School students' fundraiser was called Hearts Toward Haiti. The four-week campaign culminated just before Valentine's Day and raised more than $1,300 for the Red Cross. Many students volunteered to create posters and hang them around school to announce the event and encourage participation. Others volunteered to staff a table at lunchtime, collecting change from students.

Jefferson Middle School also conducted a fundraising effort, which was led by its Student Council, teacher Chris Felber said.

"We had a dance already scheduled for February," he said. "The students decided to donate all the proceeds of the dance to the American Red Cross to benefit the people of Haiti. It was themed the 'Haitian Relief Dance.' Students agreed to donate $2 for admission instead of the standard fee of $1."

The Student Council also donated the profits of its annual Valentine's Day Candy Grams to the American Red Cross, and sold 800 of them during their lunches the week of Valentine's Day. In all, Jefferson raised $1,000.

"The students learned to care about others in need," Felber said. "They were able to put some of the concepts they were learning into practice. For example, they learned the real meaning of humanitarian aid, which recently was a seventh-grade vocabulary word in Social Studies."

At West High School, a brainstorming session among students grew into a fundraising campaign.

"The Hope for Haiti event that we created came mostly from their suggestions, ideas, and willingness to help make the event happen," said Andy Scharm, student activities director at West.

The campaign included sales of T-shirts and bracelets and a Hope for Haiti event.

"Students really had their eyes opened when they got a chance to see some memorable images at the Hope for Haiti event," Scharm said. "The silence in the room as we showed a video really showed how much the students were tuned in to the cause."

Students continue to raise money through T-shirt and bracelet sales.

A Hall Elementary School teacher who took a couple of mission trips to Haiti several years ago helped students understand the earthquake's effects.

"At school, I shared with my class some photos from my service trips to Haiti (in 2000 and 2001)," said Abbie Leverence. "I shared with them the difficulties that people had in Haiti before the earthquake. Many of the students had heard about the earthquake already, so we discussed how the buildings were destroyed and how people didn't have anywhere to go, clean water, medicine, and how the conditions of the roads made it difficult to get the supplies where they needed to be.

"We do folktales from around the world, so we read a folktale from Haiti next. The students then practiced the story as a 'Readers' Theater' to perform for the school."

The campaign was called "Hearts for Haiti" and involved sales of mini-erasers and a heart-gram message. The heart grams were 25 cents apiece, and many parents bought an entire set of them so children could give them to all their classmates.

The result? The school raised $1,000 to be donated to the Red Cross Haiti Relief and Rebuilding Fund.

Students in "2L" played a key role by giving up recess time for two weeks so they could fill orders, attach the erasers to the heart grams and separate them by class. Teachers, families and the PTA also contributed time, supplies and support.

"The students became aware of a country and culture they never really heard about," Leverence said. "They learned how lucky they are to live where they live."

MAR 2: "THE REAL ISSUE IN HAITI IS LAND", RAIN BRINGS FLOOD TO HAITI, CONCERNS MOUNT FOR SHELTER AND LAND NEEDED FOR RELOCATION

2010-03-02T20:15:00.000-08:00

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THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

As World Watches Chile Earthquake, Deadly Floods Hit Quake-Rocked Haiti

Even as people compare Saturday's more powerful, but far less deadly Chilean earthquake to the Jan. 12 quake that leveled parts of Haiti, heavy rains are wreaking havoc on Haitians made homeless by the quake.
By Kathie Klarreich, Correspondent / March 2, 2010

Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Solange Xavier’s house in Port-au-Prince disintegrated like a sand castle when the 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti on Jan. 12. The quake also killed her son.

Ms. Xavier spent last weekend in Les Cayes, some 95 miles southeast of the capital, taking a much needed respite. But on the bus ride home torrential rains nearly carried her away. Blind in one eye, Xavier watched in horror as livestock, suitcases, and dishes floated by. Officials reported that at least a quarter of the town took on rivers of runoff water a meter and a half deep, damaging homes and spreading panic, particularly among those earthquake victims camped out in yards and open spaces. At least eight people were killed.

“If the rains could do this now – before the real rainy season – what is going to happen to those of us living in tents in Port-au-Prince? Or people sleeping on the street?” she asked. “We are all going to be dead.”

That's the issue weighing on the minds of most Haitians – and the thousands of aid workers from around the world who are helping the devastated Caribbean nation.

For weeks after the quake, Haitian authorities and international aid groups were grateful for the lack of rain as they scrambled to prepare for the torrential downpours common during Haiti's rainy season, which usually begins in April. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), which is coordinating shelter response, estimates that nearly 40 percent of the 1.3 earthquake victims now have some form of shelter. But hundreds of thousands more are living in the open or under flimsy sheets tied to thin strips of wood. Early rains pelted them, caused mudslides and increased concern that time is running out before the rainy season.

“Some in the international community failed to understand just how crucial securing temporary shelter and sanitation systems would be, given the imminent arrival of the rainy season,” said William G. O’Neill, director of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum in New York after a recent visit to Haiti. “Someone should take a hard look at what went wrong in the humanitarian planning system.”

UN works on 'decongestion'
The United Nations has identified 21 of the 415 spontaneous settlements throughout Port-au-Prince as a priority for "decongestion" but that still leaves 350,000 people unaccounted for. The new government plan, to relocate people back to their neighborhoods as opposed to establishing large camps outside the capital, has been criticized due to concerns about safety. Partially collapsed homes sit next to destroyed ones; chunks of cement and twisted rebar are perched precariously close to makeshift homes in the middle of the street. Aftershocks are as frequent as the sound of cement being dumped into pickup trucks

The first of the new government settlements, a 96-family tent camp in front of the collapsed cathedral, has relieved some of the stress for those who were among the 60,000 living on the Champs de Mars square in front of the palace.

New residents, like 26-year old Caitlin Maurice, also received rice, beans, and cooking oil. “The government, finally, is starting to do something,” said the mother of three. “But it’s hardly enough. We still don’t have toilets.”

The Haitian Red Cross Society has 5,000 volunteers working on providing water and sanitation. The IRFC plans to build at least 20,000 transitional homes and the government is exploring alternative housing options. Consultants are urging the government to use its executive power to take control of privately owned land for these settlements. If not, they worry, people will stay where they are or return to houses that weren’t safe in the first place.

"When it rains [hard], these [tents and tarps] will not provide much protection, and we all know that,” said IRFC spokesman Alex Wynter. "The real issue in Haiti is land, land, and again land.”

MAR 2: "EVERYBODY HAS TO FIGURE OUT A WAY TO SURVIVE UNTIL THINGS GET BACK IN PLACE", PORT-AU-PRINCE FACES MASSIVE CLEAN-UP, A SCRAP MARKET EMERGES

2010-03-02T19:50:00.000-08:00

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SEATTLE TIMES

Haiti Confronts A Monumental Disposal Problem
Six weeks after an earthquake reduced Port-au-Prince to ruins, Haitian and foreign officials who hope to build a new capital first have to confront — and remove — the wreckage of the old one.
By Ken Ellingwood / LOS ANGELES TIMES

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When a city crashes to the ground, how do you dispose of it?

Six weeks after an earthquake reduced Port-au-Prince to ruins, Haitian and foreign officials who hope to build a new capital first have to confront the wreckage of the old one.

The capital is a panorama of rubble: collapsed and half-fallen stores, banks, apartment buildings and homes, hillsides covered by broken shacks that fell like dominoes. Gnarled steel rebar lies all over in massive tangles, like a thousand Medusas.

The amount of debris is stunning. Officials estimate they will have to clean up as much as 25 million cubic yards of material — enough to fill the Louisiana Superdome five times over. By comparison, detritus from the destroyed World Trade Center amounted to about 1 million cubic yards.

Haiti's leaders, working with officials from the United Nations and United States, last week approved a rubble-disposal plan that is expected to take at least two years to complete.

The initial phase focuses on clearing debris from drainage ditches and around the most congested encampments in order to help shift people away from areas prone to flooding before spring rains arrive at the end of March.

"We don't have the luxury of stepping back and doing this in a relaxed way," said Mike Byrne, a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official who co-chairs a multilateral committee on debris here.

The longer-term cleanup will involve an armada of front loaders, excavators and trucks. Haitian President Rene Preval has said the effort will require 1,000 dump trucks for 1,000 days — which U.S. planners say is fairly accurate.

"We're going to have to go 24-7 on this," said Byrne, who was the government's point man in the World Trade Center cleanup.

Haitian officials have identified a handful of possible disposal sites, which are to include facilities for hazardous materials, separating refuse and crushing the concrete chunks. Early assessments indicate 90 percent of the debris can be recycled into road-building material, melted or put to other uses, Byrne said.

Many Haitians are attacking the broken mounds on their own. Impatient homeowners and businesspeople with means have hired digging machines and workers to clear their properties. Concrete debris has been dumped hurriedly along the side of one of the main roads leaving the city.

Destitute Haitians have sought to turn rubble into opportunity. The destruction has spawned a new scavenging specialty in a city where jobs were already scarce. Around the city, residents clamber over the chalky piles with undersized hammers, shovels, hacksaws and, most often, bare hands.

"Everybody has to figure out a way to survive until things get back in place," said Demarseilles Nelson, who after half a day of scavenging with bare hands had piled his wheelbarrow with a 3-foot-high stack of metal scraps. His yield included a manual typewriter that appeared to date to the days of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, the 1960s-era dictator.

Impromptu scrap markets have sprung up where enterprising young men with homemade scales buy steel rebar they drag away by hand or in shabby wheelbarrows.

In one forlorn corner of the city, amid dust and truck exhaust, 16-year-old Nahem Inora was offering 4 cents a pound for the metal. He said he planned to resell it to big-time traders for about 7 cents a pound. He had arrived that morning with $20 and had burned through half of it within hours.

"I would be more successful if I had more money to buy steel," Inora said. Waiting to sell their treasure were two boys who had carried and dragged a grimy sack loaded with 2-foot lengths of rebar.

The piles of rubble entomb an unknown number of dead — a reality that will require sensitivity when it comes to clearing. That could mean digging by hand in places where bodies are believed buried.

MAR 2: EU RELEASES 100M EUROS TO HAITI IN PROMISED AID

2010-03-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

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REUTERS UK

EU Releases 100 mln Euros For Haiti Salaries, Roads
BRUSSELS, March 2 (Reuters) - The European Union said it would start paying quake-stricken Haiti a first tranche of 100 million euros ($135 million) in promised aid on Tuesday to help the government pay salaries, rebuild schools and repair roads. The EU, one of Haiti's largest donors, committed over 300 million euros in initial aid following the devastating earthquake in January that killed more than 200,000 people in the Caribbean nation, the poorest in the Americas.

"This first envelope will be disbursed from now until May," the European Commission, executive arm of the 27-nation EU, said in a statement.

The amount will be used to rebuild government buildings and key state infrastructure. It will provide budget support to help pay salaries, rebuild schools and fix main roads around the capital, Port-au-Prince. (Reporting by Bate Felix, editing by Dale Hudson) ($1=.7395 euro)

MAR 1: HEAVY RAIN HITS HAITI, THE GUARDIAN

2010-03-01T20:15:00.000-08:00

A woman walks with an umbrella at a survivors camp during heavy rains in Port-au-Prince Photograph by Esteban Felix/AP

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THE GUARDIAN UK

Quake-torn Haiti Hit By Floods
Heavy rain has caused flooding in Haiti, killing at least 13 and trapping people in their homes and cars.
By Rory Carroll

Heavy rain has caused flooding in Haiti, killing at least 13 people as swollen rivers forced people on to roofs and trapped people in cars and homes.

With 1.3 million homeless and many living in makeshift camps with little or no sanitation as a result of January's earthquake, aid agencies have warned of another humanitarian disaster as the rainy season looms.

Several towns and villages in southern Haiti have been flooded since Saturday, a spokesman for the civil emergency unit said. UN troops and Haitian police moved 500 prisoners from a jail in Les Cayes as 1.5 metres of water swamped the coastal city. Witnesses said houses collapsed and people fled for high ground.

"At one point, people had to climb on the roofs of their homes," Joseph Yves-Marie Aubourg, the government's representative in the region, told Reuters. Five people died when their car was carried away, and others on foot were swept away in the torrent.

Les Cayes largely escaped the 12 January quake which devastated Port-au-Prince and killed more than 220,000, according to government figures. Its population was swollen by families fleeing the capital.

The government, the UN, and aid agencies have all raised the alarm about the rainy season, which starts in March or April and continues until autumn.

The scale of Haiti's catastrophe means that even a huge relief effort has not provided adequate shelter to hundreds of thousands of people. There are 415 temporary settlements housing roughly 550,000 quake survivors, according to the Organisation of International Migration. Others are living in rubble or with relatives.

The UN aims to provide every family with two plastic tarpaulins by 1 May. So far about 40% of the 1.3 million in need have received tents, tarpaulins or shelter toolkits, according to the Red Cross. Even if the UN reaches its target, rains could turn camps into disease-ridden swamps.

Already the stench of human waste is overpowering at settlements like Saint-Louis de Gonzague, which has one portable toilet for 10,000 people. Doctors have reported widespread cases of diarrhoea, abdominal pain, fever and infections. The big fears are cholera and typhoid.

It took just a few hours of rain one night last month to turn some Port-au-Prince camps into muddy quagmires. The rainy season brings tropical torrents and, from summer, hurricanes.

Nature's deadline has prompted the authorities to try to thin the makeshift camps by registering families whose homes can be swiftly repaired and rebuilt. Others will be encouraged to move in with relatives or friends.

MAR 1: UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS STUDENTS SPONSOR DRIVE TO HELP AMPUTEES

2010-03-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

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KHBS, NW Arkansas

UA To Sponsor Limb Drive For Haitian Amputees

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- Doctors and aid workers fear the Haitian earthquake has created a generation of amputees. Many of these survivors are children, as roughly half of the country's 9.8 million people are younger than 21.

To help address this emerging crisis, students in the biological and agricultural engineering department at the University of Arkansas have helped organize the Northwest Arkansas Limb Drive for Haiti. The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 6, at the Pauline Whitaker Arena on Garland Avenue. The students and their teacher, Tom Costello, associate professor of biological engineering, are partnering with Physicians for Peace, an international medical mission based in Virginia, and Hanger Orthopedic Group to collect used prostheses, otherwise known as artificial limbs. Similar events, some of which also collect crutches, canes, walkers and wheelchairs, are being held in communities across the United States.

Costello and his biological-engineering students have worked with Physicians for Peace since 2006. Several teams of students in his senior design course have designed low-cost prosthetics that can be manufactured in developing countries. Students have twice visited a prosthetic clinic in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, to get feedback on their designs.

"It is difficult to measure the full extent of this tragedy, but some aid workers have estimated that between 2,000 and 4,000 people have lost an arm or leg in the aftermath of the earthquake," Costello said. "Those who have lost a leg will be completely immobile until they receive crutches or a wheelchair. Eventually, patients who are fitted with an artificial limb will be taught to walk and maybe even run again."

In addition to taking prostheses to the Pauline Whitaker Arena on March 6, donors can take used limbs to any Hanger office, and Hanger will ship them to Physicians for Peace in Haiti. Local communities are encouraged to promote limb collection efforts.

Northwest Arkansas residents who are unable to drop off limb donations at the arena on March 6 may call to arrange a pickup by a student volunteer. For more information, visit LimbDrive.org or call the department of biological and agricultural engineering at 479-575-2351. Only donations of orthopedic rehabilitation equipment and devices will be accepted. The event organizers ask donors not to bring clothing, food or other relief supplies.

MAR 1: AP STORY ON A YOUNG MAN WHO LOST HIS LEG TO SAVE HIS SISTER'S LIFE

2010-03-01T16:55:00.000-08:00

Petersen Hilan grimaces as he does physical therapy on his recently amputated leg at a field hospital in Port-au-Prince. Petersen lost his leg when his house collapsed in last months earthquake. Feb 18th. Photograph by Ramon Espinosa/AP

Petersen Hilan walks back home in the street after visiting a field hospital to get physical therapy in Port-au-Prince. Feb 18th. Photograph by Ramon Espinosa/AP

Hilan is carried by a friend in the rubble of Hilan's earthquake destroyed home upon his return after being hospitalized in Port-au-Prince. Feb 18th. Photograph by Ramon Espinosa/AP

Hilan plays a video game inside his tent at a camp set up for earthquake survivors left homeless in Port-au-Prince. Feb 18th. Photograph by Ramon Espinosa/AP

Hilan sits inside his tent at a camp set up for earthquake survivors left homeless in Port-au-Prince. Feb 18th. Photograph by Ramon Espinosa/AP

Petersen Hilan, right, walks with childhood friend, 18-year-old Felice Charles upon his return to his neighborhood after being hospitalized in Port-au-Prince. Feb 18th. Photograph by Ramon Espinosa/AP

Hilan is greeted by friends and neighbors in Port-au-Prince. Feb 18th. Photograph by Ramon Espinosa/AP

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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Young Haitian Lost Leg To Save His Sister's Life
By Paisley Dodds (AP)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — It's just after 6 a.m., and Petersen Hilan is waking from a dream where he was rollerblading and playing soccer. The morning sun jolts him back to reality — he no longer has a right leg.

The high school senior looks up at the tangerine light streaming through the canvas tent. Mornings remind him of the feeling just before his leg was amputated three weeks ago.

"The serum went in my arm and all I thought was that death probably feels just as sweet," Hilan says.
He looks under his cot to find the grey rollerblades he used to wear and extra crutches stuck in the mud. There is no running water, so he splashes cologne under his arms. He struggles to lift himself up on the cot to pull on a pair of baggy denim shorts.

In Haiti's apocalyptic landscape of tilted and flattened houses, smiling schoolchildren in smart uniforms and colorful hair bows have been replaced by legions of young amputees. More than 4,000 Haitians have gone through amputations since the quake, hundreds of them without anesthesia. Some lost more of their limbs than necessary because of the lack of equipment and medicine during a crushing influx of broken people.

More amputations are expected. Doctors say some people have been walking around with compound fractures for weeks. Others have never had medical treatment for infections.

One of Haiti's few prosthetics factories, Healing Hands, was severely damaged in the quake, and it could take months to produce enough prosthetics for amputees. The government has said it will develop a plan for the country's newly disabled — Haiti has few elevators, ramps or accessible buildings — but few details have emerged.

In the meantime, amputees like Hilan are struggling to cope in a country where the disabled have long been seen as a drain on their families.

The 21-year-old doesn't want sympathy. But in another country, he believes, he wouldn't have lost the leg. Doctors say he's probably right.

"I think eventually there will be a new Haiti," says Hilan. "Unfortunately, I lost my leg in the old Haiti."
___
When the earth shook on Jan. 12, Hilan was just a semester away from high school graduation, after several interruptions from hurricanes, floods and political unrest. He was living with his mother and seven family members in a cement house about 10 blocks away from the Champ de Mars, Port-au-Prince's central plaza.

As he stood in the tiny kitchen near his 4-year-old sister, Carmel, cinder blocks came crashing down, one by one.

"I grabbed Carmel and pushed her outside," says Hilan. "But then everything became dark and it felt like something was pulling me into the ground. I looked down and my foot was completely broken. I couldn't move."

A friend extracted Hilan and laid him on the street where other casualties were frozen in a daze, from injuries or shock at the nightmare unfolding around them.

As dusk fell, Hilan lay on the ground for two hours while his friend and a cousin searched for a hospital. Many had tumbled. Others were crowded with patients but no doctors or nurses.

They eventually hurried back to report that a tidal wave was coming. Panicked by what turned out to be a false rumor, they moved Hilan to the higher ground of the Champ de Mars.

Hilan's family tried every day for the next six days to get him medical attention. Constant aftershocks only exacerbated the pain. The gangrene was creeping, the stench of Hilan's wound worsened.

Eventually Hilan went to a hospital near the airport, where an American doctor explained his options.

"He apologized to me but told me that if he didn't amputate, I would be dead in two days."
___
These days, Hilan wakes up in an outdoor camp where thousands of earthquake survivors live. He shares a cot with two siblings, while six other family members sleep on a splintered pink door and chairs.

Around 9 a.m., Hilan's mother slips outside to buy coffee and bread rolls. She's ashamed to ask him to do such things now. Hilan's new life has meant abandoning favorite pastimes and chores such as watching out for siblings and shopping for groceries.

Hilan instructs a friend in the tent to connect the television donated by neighbors. But first they have to see if the overnight rains have shorted out the mud-caked wires. With the flick of the button, Hilan is relieved.

Before, he would play soccer with friends or dance kompa — slow, rhythmic music — with girlfriends. Now, he plays video games.

An hour passes as he splatters virtual enemies on the old TV screen.

"One of the worst things about this is I can't defend myself," says Hilan.

Haiti is grueling enough for the able-bodied, but it can be torture for the disabled. Many families have put disabled relatives out on the street or sent them to live elsewhere because they can no longer contribute financially.

"We were out on the street and a little boy ran up to us shouting, "Bout Pye!'" Hilan's mother Denise says, using a Creole phrase that means half leg. "I was shocked. It made me feel like I was dying inside, but Hilan just ignored it and kept moving."
By 11 a.m., Hilan is bored. He sets out for the hospital.

He slowly makes his way through a maze of white tents. A woman is roasting corn on the cob over an open charcoal fire. A rooster pecks at the dirt. A man holds a baby whose leg has been amputated below the hip. The passage between the tents is almost impenetrable because of the mud. Hilan's crutches get caught on neighbors' tent lines.

Eventually, he makes it to the busy street.

A man in a battered Subaru offers him a lift for 50 gourdes ($1.50). The car takes him to a private hospital that has since gone public to accommodate Haiti's countless injured. Tents handling the overflow are filled with amputees like Hilan.
___
A nurse tells Hilan to take a seat, but all are taken. Eventually a young girl in jeweled flip-flops gets up.

"I hate having to ask people to do things for me now," he says.

In front of him, a toddler in a frilly dress, her leg also amputated, cries for her mother. A French medic leans down and blows up a pink balloon. Her sobs subside.

Hilan fidgets. He is impatient but has grown accustomed to waiting.

Hospital workers say they've rarely seen patients so stoic in the face of horrific loss and adversity.

"We've created the phrase, 'Haitian up,'" says Dr. Justine Crowley, meaning "toughen up or buck up."

Crowley, an amputations specialist from Colorado Springs, Colorado, says they still don't have enough doctors, nurses or plastic surgeons to keep up with some 70 patients they see daily — many needing amputations. A few weeks ago, they were seeing between 150 and 200 patients.

As Hilan waits, one man is still refusing an amputation.

"We just give them antibiotics and hope they don't die," Crowley says.

It's too soon to start fitting new amputees with artificial limbs because their wounds have not healed, she says. Their meager diets hamper recovery.

After some time, Hilan's name is finally called. He hobbles to get his wound cleaned.
"He's doing extraordinarily well," says Dr. Monica Johnson.

At noon, he ambles down a steep pebbly hill to get physical therapy in a tent outside the hospital. He spots a friend — 22-year-old Herby Michel, a rap musician who lost his left arm inside a recording studio when the quake hit.

"There's the crybaby!" Hilan shouts, laughing and smiling. "This guy was in the bed next to me when I had my leg amputated. And all he did was cry for his mother, saying 'Mom-my, Mom-my! I didn't get any sleep because of him!" he says, laughing hysterically.

Hilan says he's never cried since the amputation.

The two young men sit for hours, joking about their recoveries. Both were in their hospital beds Jan. 20 when a powerful 5.9 aftershock hit.

"Things started shaking and a lot of the patients pulled out their IVs and ran out of the hospital like chickens!" Hilan says, laughing. "We just sat there laughing like crazy."

The wait drags on under a blazing sun. A worker comes out with a pamphlet in Creole showing how to keep wounds clean. The pamphlet shows two white hands under a sink with water running out of a tap.

Most Haitians don't have running water.
___
It's not until 2 p.m. that Hilan is finally seen.

"I'm not a patient person," he says again, moving his stump back and forth like he's kicking a soccer ball.

As he exercises his stump, he winces with each move. Like many new amputees, he suffers from phantom limb pain.

"I'm just happy it hurts less now. Before, even the smallest breeze caused by people walking past was awful," he says.

An hour later, he's done and goes to visit friends in his old neighborhood. Canadian rescue workers with a bulldozer are retrieving two bodies from a collapsed hotel.
"I don't want to see this," he says, turning away from a body bag.

On Grand Rue, all that remains of Hilan's house is the dining room and bedroom.

"Hilan!" people shout. One grabs Hilan's crutches and hoists him on his back over the debris and up to a small flat space shaded by a tree.

The crowd slowly grows and laughter erupts. They say they miss him. They ask how he's coping.

"These are all my friends, my best friends," says Hilan, peering into the wreck that was his house. Clothes and kitchen utensils remain covered in a thick white dust.

He makes his way up a steep hill where a gaggle of girls wait. The street is slippery and Hilan falls — directly at the feet of his 18-year-old girlfriend, Scherly, who stands motionless and looks away.

Another childhood friend, 18-year-old Felice Charles, breaks the awkward moment, helping him up and throwing her arms around him in a playful embrace.

It is the first time all day that Hilan's tough exterior has crumpled. His smile fades and his shoulders slump.
Scherly, meanwhile, admits she hasn't accepted this new reality.

"I'm not sure if I will ever be able to accept it," she says, as an old woman looks at Hilan, wiping tears from her eyes. "It's been a big shock."

The crowd, which has again swollen, rushes out to hug and kiss him. Scherly looks on with a tentative smile.
___
It's nearly 7 p.m. and darkness is setting in. Hilan, who has only eaten bread, a boiled egg and a banana all day, heads back to his temporary home. Back at the tent, Carmel rushes up to him.

Their mother hopes that someday, Carmel will realize her older brother lost his leg for her.

FEB 28: "THE RAINY SEASON IS THE HARD DEADLINE", NY TIMES EDITORIAL

2010-02-28T20:30:00.000-08:00

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Haiti's Futile Race Against The Rain

FEB 28: STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL BLOG, REPORT FROM A VOLUNTEER

2010-02-28T04:50:00.000-08:00

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."

FEB 27: "THERE IS NO CORRUPTION HERE", PRES PREVAL ANGRY OVER ALLEGATIONS IN ARTICLE, WASHINGTON POST REPORTS

2010-02-27T10:02:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON POST, Mullen Leads Trip To Haiti, Faces Preval's Ire On Allegation

FEB 25: HEAVY RAIN HITS HAITI, ASSOCIATED PRESS

2010-02-25T20:40:00.000-08:00

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/AP

full article and photograph via
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."

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

2010-02-25T00:05:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from a report by Doctors Without Borders/Medicins sans Frontieres

Haiti: The Thinking Behind The Hard Choices

Surgeon Angeleke Saridakis discussing the care needed by the over 100,000 amputees in Haiti:

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.

FEB 24: HEALTH CONCERNS OVER LACK OF PROPER SANITATION, UPI REPORTS

2010-02-24T14:00:00.000-08:00

full article via

UPI

Sanitation Woes Grow In Haiti Camps

PORT-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.

FEB 22: HOMELESS ACCUSE POLICE OF HALTING AID, AP REPORTS FROM HAITI

2010-02-22T21:15:00.000-08:00

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.

FEB 22: A CAMP IN CITE SOLEIL, REUTERS PHOTO

2010-02-22T21:10:00.000-08:00

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

via YAHOO! NEWS

Photography From AP and Reuters - Homeless Haitians Set Up Camps

FEB 22: LAND TO BE TAKEN TO BUILD CAMPS, AP REPORTS

2010-02-22T20:30:00.000-08:00

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.

FEB 22: THE RAINS COME EARLY, DISPATCHES FROM HAITI VIA GOOD

2010-02-22T20:00:00.000-08:00

GOOD.IS, The Rains Come Early

FEB 22: OSCAR WINNER SEAN PENN LEADS URGENT CALL TO "BEAT THE RAIN", SHELTER AND RELOCATION URGENTLY NEEDED AHEAD OF RAINY SEASON

2010-02-22T16:45:00.000-08:00

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

FEB 21: "WE'RE JUST FIGHTING TO SURVIVE", HAITI'S GARMENT INDUSTRY, LOW-PAYING JOBS AND CLINTON'S RECOVERY PLAN

2010-02-21T21:15:00.000-08:00

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 / AP

full 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

2010-02-21T21:00:00.000-08:00

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

FEB 19: THE URGENT NEED FOR LAND AND HAITI'S ELITE, AP REPORT

2010-02-19T20:45:00.000-08:00

full article via

ASSOCIATED PRESS / YAHOO! NEWS
Haiti 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"

2010-02-19T19:50:00.000-08:00

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/GettyImages

WALL 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

2010-02-19T19:45:00.000-08:00

full article via

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rain 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

2010-02-19T18:00:00.000-08:00

full article via
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

2010-02-19T14:55:00.000-08:00

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

Full photography story:
THE NEW YORK TIMES, A Growing Risk In Haiti

FEB 19: THREE IN A MILLION - VOICES FROM THE HAITIAN CAMPS

2010-02-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

full article via

COMMONDREAMS.ORG

Three in a Million - Voices from the Haitian Camps
By 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.

FEB 18: HAITI FLIGHT LOGS DETAIL EARLY CHAOS AND CHALLENGES AT AIRPORT , AP REPORTS

2010-02-18T17:00:00.000-08:00

full article via

ASSOCIATED PRESS / THE WASHINGTON POST
Haiti 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: NEW JERSEY VOLUNTEERS ACTING LOCALLY TO GATHER PROSTHETICS, WHEELCHAIRS AND SET UP PHYSICAL THERAPY CLINIC IN HAITI

2010-02-18T11:25:00.000-08:00

NORTHJERSEY.COM, Ramsey Volunteers Offer Expertise To Amputees In Haiti

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

2010-02-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-18T09:30:00.000-08:00

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.

FEB 17: OVER 100,000 AMPUTEES ESTIMATED IN HAITI REPORTS TIME MAGAZINE

2010-02-17T23:15:00.000-08:00

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?

FEB 17: MIAMI HERALD REPORTS ON THE PRESSING URGENCY FOR POST-OP FACILITIES, REHAB AND MEDICAL STAFF AS DOCTORS RETURN TO US AND FUNDING RUNS LOW

2010-02-17T22:00:00.000-08:00

MIAMI HERALD, Lack Of Doctors And Rehab Threaten Haitians' Recovery

FEB 17: PREPARING FOR BEDTIME, AP PHOTO GALLERY

2010-02-17T21:00:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

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.”

FEB 17: DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS DETAILS THE DECISIONS LEADING TO AMPUTATIONS AND THE URGENT NEED FOR POST-OP CARE

2010-02-17T14:55:00.000-08:00

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.

“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

FEB 16: BBC WITH REPORT FROM SHELTERBOX CHARITY AS RAIN APPROACHES

2010-02-16T23:45:00.000-08:00

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

FEB 16: AHEAD OF THE RAIN, AID AGENCIES RACE TO SHELTER 1.2 MILLION HOMELESS SAYS USA TODAY

2010-02-16T23:25:00.000-08:00

USA TODAY, Agencies Race To Help 1.2 Million Homeless In Haiti

FEB 16: THE WASHINGTON POST REPORTS ON GRASSROOTS MEDICAL AND AID VOLUNTEERS WHO MADE THEIR OWN WAY TO HAITI

2010-02-16T22:00:00.000-08:00

THE WASHINGTON POST, Medical Volunteer Fought To Stem Pain And Chaos In Haiti

FEB 16: AP PHOTO GALLERY

2010-02-16T20:55:00.000-08:00

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/AP

AP via YAHOO!, Continuing Photo Gallery from Haiti

FEB 16: HEAVY RAIN BRINGS MUDSLIDES, 4 SCHOOLCHILDREN KILLED

2010-02-16T14:00:00.000-08:00

full article via

UPI

Mudslide 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.

FEB 16: QUEENS NY VOLUNTEER DOCTOR SAYS REHAB CENTER FOR HAITIAN AMPUTEES IS URGENT, DAILY NEWS

2010-02-16T11:30:00.000-08:00

full article via

DAILY NEWS
Plea To Aid Haiti Amputees Boro Doc Says Victims In Need Of Rehab Center
By Clare Trapasso

Days after an earthquake wrought destruction on his parents' homeland, a Springfield Gardens doctor and a team of fellow Haitian-American physicians arrived in Haiti, armed with suitcases stuffed with medical supplies.

While Dr. William Gibbs, 40, attended to a never-ending stream of human misery, an idea came to him.

Gibbs said he became convinced that Haiti needed a rehabilitation center for the nation's new amputees - estimated to be at least 2,000 people, according to the World Health Organization.

He enlisted support from the Association of Haitian Physicians Abroad, to which he belongs.

"I had problems discharging patients because they're homeless, there was a lack of medication and there was going to be a lack of followup," said Gibbs, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at New York Hospital Queens in Flushing.

"We're afraid they're going to die if we discharge them without followup appointments," Gibbs said. He compared the dearth of high-tech medical equipment to what he imagined Civil War doctors had to work with.

Patients with broken legs arrived in wheelbarrows from as far as 10 miles away, he said. After every aftershock, patients would injure themselves further by jumping out of their beds to escape the shaking walls of the hospital.

To make matters worse, many amputations were done with rudimentary tools after the quake to prevent deaths from infections, he said. Those patients need further surgery, so that prosthetic limbs can be attached. Then they need rehab.

Gibbs envisions creating an institute where local professionals are trained to treat amputees, construct and fit prosthetics and perform physical therapy. The association is firmly behind its creation.

"[These] are people who, without any rehabilitation effort, are doomed to become beggars," said Dr. Louis Auguste, president of the association's New York chapter. "Without this rehabilitation, they'll never get a chance to get back to mainstream life."

The group has been in frequent contact with medical teams in Haiti and is collecting money for the institute.

Gibbs has also reached out for donations from companies that supply prosthetics. He plans to go back to Haiti this spring.

"I'm still in fact-finding mode," said Gibbs, who is continuing work on the logistics of the institute. But he vowed that "this year, something's going to happen."

It couldn't happen soon enough for Dr. Evan Lyon.

The Alabama physician has done extensive work in Haiti over the last decade, and returned following the harrowing quake.

"The need is fairly urgent," Lyon said of the rehabilitation institute. "Haiti as a nation just doesn't have much expertise in terms of physical rehabilitation medicine."

Visit www.amhe.org to donate.

FEB 16: SAVE THE CHILDREN USES SONGS TO TEACH MOTHERS ABOUT HEALTH CARE FOR BABIES AHEAD OF RAIN SEASON

2010-02-16T11:00:00.000-08:00

ALERT NET, Rain Is Coming: How Songs Can Help Save Babies' Lives

FEB 14: HAITI AIRPORT TO REOPEN, REUTERS

2010-02-14T20:00:00.000-08:00

REUTERS, Haiti Airport To Reopen For Big Carriers On Friday

FEB 14: HAITI IN MOURNING_NY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHY

2010-02-14T16:35:00.000-08:00

Haiti has begun to emerge from its shock and mourn individual victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake. According to the Haitian government, more than 230,000 people died from the disaster, but initially few had ceremonies to mark their passing. A woman prayed inside the main Cathedral in Port-au-Prince. Photograph by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Even the collective loss of life was not memorialized until this past weekend when the government imposed a national period of mourning. Photograph by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

THE NEW YORK TIMES, view entire photography essay, Haiti Mourns Its Dead

FEB 14: THE GUARDIAN UK REPORTS ON MORE THAN A MILLION NEEDING SHELTER WITH THE RAIN STILL TO COME

2010-02-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

THE GUARDIAN UK, More Than A Million Remain With No Shelter In Haiti As Rains Loom

"Shipping in enough family tents for all the people in need would take months," (the Christian Charity) Care said in a statement. "Most people crammed into overcrowded camps are huddled under bed sheets strung between poles or sticks – hardly enough to block out the sun, but useless against the torrential downpours of Haiti's rainy season."

FEB 13: NY TIMES WITH FIRST RESPONDER DOCTORS WHO CANNOT FORGET HAITI

2010-02-13T23:30:00.000-08:00

full article via

THE NEW YORK TIMES,

Doctors Haunted by Haitians They Couldn’t Help
(Re-Posted Here as The NY Times may discontinue the direct link in the future)
By DEBORAH STRONG
Published FEB 12

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The foreign doctors who performed the first amputations after the earthquake used hacksaws. They relied on vodka for sterilization, substituted local numbing for general anesthesia, jury-rigged tourniquets from rubber gloves. Working around the clock in improvised operating rooms, they sacrificed limbs and lost patients to injuries that are no longer supposed to be disabling or deadly.

Now back in their antiseptic, high-tech offices in the United States and elsewhere, the medical professionals who initially flew to Haiti’s rescue are haunted by their experiences, “overwhelmed by conflicting feelings of accomplishment and guilt,” as Dr. Louisdon Pierre described it.

They witnessed what Dr. Laurence J. Ronan of Massachusetts General Hospital described as a “mass casualty horror show.” They practiced what Dr. Dean G. Lorich of the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan called “Civil War medicine.” They saved lives, probably by the thousands. But their accomplishments were limited by the circumstances, and then they left, uneasily, before conditions for doctors and patients alike started improving.

Most of the doctors interviewed said they were committed to returning to Haiti and to marshaling the medical community’s resources to deal with the thousands of Haitians who sustained permanently disabling injuries. The needs are staggering: from basic wound care to skin grafts, revision surgery, physical and occupational rehabilitation, prostheses and trauma therapy.

“Everything that everyone did during those first two heartbreaking weeks will have been for nothing if these patients don’t get continuing care,” said Dr. Elizabeth Bellino, a pediatrician based at Tulane University who worked in Haiti right after the earthquake.

In Uganda now on a project, Dr. Bellino, 34, said she closed her eyes and saw the beaming face of a 12-year-old Haitian boy named Mystil Jean Wesmer who ended up comforting her when she dissolved into tears. As she recounts it, Mystil smiled gently and, sensing that she was overwhelmed by the need around her at a field hospital run by Americans, said: “ ‘Go take care of the sicker kids. I’ll be O.K.’ ”

He himself was waiting to have his leg amputated.

“All he wanted to know was how he was going to walk to school and church,” Dr. Bellino said. “I said, ‘Well, we’ll figure that out.’ But now I’m so worried about him, about all the kids.”

Dr. Pierre, a Haitian-American who is the director of pediatric intensive care at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, said he thought constantly about the patients he left behind, too. Even as he plans his next trip — he and Dr. Stephen Carryl, the chairman of surgery at his hospital, will be returning with a prosthetics maker — a few memories plague him.

Back in Brooklyn, he still hears the loud, shrill cry of a mother at the moment her small son died of a raging infection on the lawn of a hospital in the Carrefour neighborhood. The mother and father, one child already lost to the earthquake, had implored Dr. Pierre to help their 4-year-old, who had been eviscerated by a concrete block and hurriedly stitched back together by a local doctor.

But the boy, lying in a crib under a tree, his heart rate racing, his breathing way too fast, was clearly suffering septic shock, and Dr. Pierre, equipped only with his stethoscope, could do nothing.

“I felt so helpless,” he said, and not long afterward, while he was deeply sedating another patient for surgery, he heard the wail that told of the boy’s death.

Later, amid the patients strewn across the hospital’s grounds, Dr. Pierre spotted a wrapped bundle in what appeared to be an abandoned incubator. The bundle, mewling, was a premature infant whose mother had died in childbirth. Dr. Pierre and a pediatric nurse from Brooklyn, Sharon Pickering, frantically tried to find a way to hydrate the baby.

“This is something we know how to do,” he said they told each other. Finally, they managed to insert a needle in a bone cavity and get the baby some fluids. But the next morning, Dr. Pierre found the incubator empty.

Such losses were shattering but it was hard to react at the time, the doctors said. There was too much to do, and the circumstances were disorienting. Dr. Lorich, an orthopedic trauma surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery, said it was hard to adjust to the grim reality of mass amputations. “I am in the habit of saving legs,” he said.

When his 13-member team from New York arrived at the Haitian Community Hospital, thousands of terribly injured Haitians lay on stretchers, boards, mattresses and the floor, among them tiny children with crushed legs, all by themselves.

The hospital had two functioning operating rooms, Dr. Lorich said, but the anesthesia machine did not work, the oxygen tanks were empty, there was no blood supply and the labs were not functioning. Still, the New York team plunged in, performing 40 amputations, 60 limb-saving operations and, to conclude three sleepless days, one Caesarean section — “a nice pink baby,” Dr. Lorich said.

The departure, however, was unsettling. Dr. Lorich’s team was exhausted, as were their supplies, but a flight that was supposed to be arriving with a fresh team of surgeons and nurses to replace them had been canceled. Outside the hospital, crowds seeking help pushed against barricaded doors, and they did not want the foreign doctors to abandon them. The doctors needed a military escort to leave.

In Uganda, three weeks away from her return to Haiti, Dr. Bellino said she could not stop wondering how the 12-year-old Mystil had fared after his amputation.

Through an uncle, the boy was found at the World Harvest Missions/New Life orphanage, where American volunteers are looking after wounded children who have been discharged from field hospitals.

Mystil was lying on a mattress on the concrete floor of a church with a roof damaged in the quake. On his plaid shirt he wore a SpongeBob sticker, which a volunteer said he had earned by doing several laps around a mango tree on his new crutches. Sarah Wimmer, a paramedic from Arizona, said that Mystil’s wound was healing well, and that he was receiving some physical and emotional therapy. When his stitches are removed, he will be sent home to his parents, who are living outside their cracked house, but he will be considered an outpatient, Ms. Wimmer said.

Reached in Africa, Dr. Bellino sighed. “I can breathe now,” she said after learning that Mystil was all right.

Lying on the mattress, with tired, sad eyes, Mystil had said he missed “Dr. Elizabeth.” Asked if he wanted the doctor to bring him anything when she returned to Haiti, Mystil said: “Toys, I guess. I know — a bicycle!”

Then, looking down at his bandaged stump, the boy slapped his forehead and buried his face in a pillow. “I forgot,” he said.

Mystil Jean Wesmer, 12, above, is recovering in a Port-au-Prince hospital after his leg was amputated. Photograph by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

FEB 12: FIRST RAIN IN HAITI RAISES URGENT NEED FOR SHELTER, AL JAZEERA REPORTS

2010-02-12T22:25:00.000-08:00

AL JAZEERA, Rains Heighten Haiti Disease Fears

FEB 12: VIDEO_CBS NEWS FROM HAITI, ONE MONTH AFTER THE QUAKE

2010-02-12T21:45:00.000-08:00

Watch CBS News Videos Online

FEB 12: "OUR CHILDREN WILL BE SICK, WE WILL BE SICK, MORE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE", REUTERS ON THE NEED FOR SHELTER

2010-02-12T20:25:00.000-08:00

full article via

REUTERS

One Month After Quake, Tropical Rain Brings Fresh Misery
The overnight downpour in Port-au-Prince and the angry protest by several hundred Haitians at the U.N. mission headquarters has brought into sharp focus the urgent need for shelter in one of the world’s poorest countries.

REUTERS - Rain drenched quake survivors in the tent camps of the Haitian capital on Thursday, a warning of fresh misery to come for the 1 million homeless living in the street one month after the devastating earthquake.

Although skies cleared by dawn, the overnight downpour and a noisy, early morning protest by several hundred Haitians at the U.N. mission headquarters brought into sharp focus simmering anger over the dire need for shelter in the poorest country in the Americas.

Friday marks one month since the Jan. 12 magnitude 7 earthquake that shattered the capital Port-au-Prince and killed 212,000 people. Haiti is in a race against time to move survivors from the rudimentary homes they have fashioned out of plastic tarps, bedsheets and panels of corrugated zinc.

“They’ve been collecting money for Haiti around the world. Many millions have been collected. But we are still in misery,” Jean-Max Seraphin, 25, said as he stood near the sodden cotton bedsheets that serve as his home in downtown Port-au-Prince.

“If millions have been collected, why don’t they buy tents? Our children will be sick. We will be sick. And more people are going to die.”

The tropical rainy season could start within weeks and the Caribbean hurricane season begins on June 1, with the drainage canals of the capital choked with trash and earthquake rubble. Haiti is prone to flash floods because it has been virtually stripped of trees to make charcoal for cooking.

“When the rainy season starts, it’s not that people will get wet, but that they will get washed away,” said Alberto Wilde, country director of the U.S.-based Cooperative Housing Foundation, which is trying to provide temporary shelters for quake survivors.

Perilous time

Haiti remains on a knife edge nearly a month into one of the biggest disaster relief efforts in history, aid workers in the Haitian capital say.

Sanitation in the nearly 500 spontaneous encampments that have grown up around teeming, chaotic Port-au-Prince is woeful and health officials say they are seeing increasing cases of tetanus, dengue and other ailments.

The U.N. World Food Program said it is feeding about 2 million people, nearly a quarter of the country’s population. Distribution of sacks of rice and other staples is flowing more smoothly, but some residents are still complaining about shortages and aid is turning up on the black market.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said this week the government has “no clear vision” of how to move 1 million people into better temporary shelters, and said it could be a decade before Haiti can build 250,000 homes to replace those destroyed.

Port-au-Prince is clogged with concrete rubble and tent cities that have grown to bursting in open fields, along the sides of roads, on the edges of Toussaint Louverture International Airport, on a golf course, on sidewalks, in the courtyards of businesses and the yards of collapsed homes.

Fetid air envelops the flimsy shacks and tents that radiate out from the crumbling National Palace in the heart of the city, through the Champs de Mars, the main city square, and surrounding a statue of Henri Christophe, a leader of the slave rebellion that freed Haiti from French rule in 1804.

No showers, no toilets

The discomfort is palpable in the camps. Many people have no toilets, tote water in buckets and bathe in the open.

While the rain could wash away some of the dust from the hundreds of collapsed buildings in the stricken city, it could also worsen a plague of mosquitoes. Workers have begun fumigating tent camps using portable fumigation units.

Cries of “help us, help us” rose from the camps as the rains fell before dawn on Thursday, residents said.

“Mosquitoes are eating us,” said Marjorie Louis, 34, who is living in a makeshift home of metal sheets and sleeping on a blanket on the pavement. “We need a place to stay, we need food, water. We have no doors and we are afraid at night.”

Aid groups say food distribution is getting better each day. “We’re doing the best we can to move as fast as we can,” said Lewis Lucke, chief of the U.S. relief effort.

But protests are a near-daily occurrence. Demonstrators blocked trucks passing the U.N. base in Port-au-Prince on Thursday.

The United States has 13,000 military personnel assigned to the massive international relief effort, some of them helping Haitian police and U.N. troops with keeping the peace.

“We’ve accomplished a lot,” Lieutenant General Ken Keen, commander of the U.S. military effort, said. “But we have a long way to go.”

via FRANCE24

FEB 12: "THE RAINY SEASON HAS STARTED", PARTNERS IN HEALTH REPORTS ON THE THREAT OF DISEASE AS THE RAINS COME TO HAITI

2010-02-12T17:30:00.000-08:00

STAND WITH HAITI, There Is More And More Misery

Excerpt:
In addition to shelter issues, rainy weather brings a host other of potential problems for Haiti. In the crowded temporary settlement camps, pools of stagnant water could spell a potential malaria outbreak. With little sanitation at these settlements, rains could contaminate drinking water supplies, leading to waterborne diseases such as typhoid and dysentery.

Bad weather is also a concern for the structural integrity of buildings already damaged by the earthquake. Collapsed buildings and landslides caused by rains could also render roads impassable, complicating relief and recovery efforts in general.

With the hurricane season just a few months away, PIH is urging the international community to help form and carry out a large-scale action plan immediately. To not do so would be unconscionable.

FEB 12: "WE ARE NOT OUT OF THE EMERGENCY PHASE YET", MSF UPDATE

2010-02-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

MSF/Doctors Without Borders files an update from on-the-ground in Haiti, The Emergency Phase Is Not Over

FEB 11: REUTERS UK WITH STATS FROM HAITI ONE MONTH ON, 1 MILLION HOMELESS, OVER 200,000 DEAD

2010-02-11T22:15:00.000-08:00

REUTERS UK, One Month After Haiti Quake, Rain Add Misery

FEB 11: AUTHOR NAOMI KLEIN ON HAITI, DEBT AND FORGIVENESS

2010-02-11T20:20:00.000-08:00

THE GUARDIAN UK, Forgiveness For Haiti? We Should Be Begging Theirs by Naomi Klein

FEB 10: "BETTER THAN NOTHING, BUT STILL NOT GREAT", NEWSWEEK OPINION ON ANDERSON COOPER AND CNN'S RETURN TO HAITI

2010-02-10T22:30:00.000-08:00

NEWSWEEK,

Anderson Cooper's Haiti Reporting

Blog Opinion:
Anderson Cooper and Dr. Gupta have been at times the only major TV media on the ground bringing the stories and images to America. And when they have gone off script and offered opinions and critiques of the ineptness and often callous approach they have seen by the US and UN they have done what few in the TV news media have done - they provided a real point of view to what they have witnessed.

Case in point when Anderson Cooper looked in the camera one night in the first week or so and said that medical personnel could help by getting on planes to DR and travel into Haiti with as much medical supplies as they could carry. It was a moment that summed up the disaster: the US and international response was so terrible that a newscaster had to make a direct call to action to anyone watching. I have no doubt that this reverberated on some level with people and helped contribute to the grassroots actions we have seen by medical personnel in the US getting to Haiti.

And when Dr Gupta took a hand-truck into a US military tent at the airport and retrieved antibiotics and painkillers for a hospital he had visited earlier, he showed clearly how mis-managed the US response was - one which lacked a heart and a mind. On that day the CNN medical correspondent was doing a better job than the entire response ordered by the President.

I wish Cooper and Gupta had conveyed this kind of urgency when they had the chance on high profile stages such as the George Clooney telethon. I wish they had let their guards down then and told the American people the truth at that time. Given the suffering that was surrounding them it would have been right and just if they had spoken plainly and with more conviction about what they had been witnessing. It would have done more for the Haitian people than Justin Timberlake and the other celebs singing songs.

FEB 07: HAITI'S ORPHANS_NY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHY

2010-02-07T16:35:00.000-08:00

Haitian children prepared to eat dinner recently at the Foyer of Patience orphanage in Port-au-Prince. Foyer of Patience is like hundreds of places that pass as orphanages for thousands of children in the poorest country in the hemisphere. Photograph by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

THE NEW YORK TIMES, full photography essay, Orphanages In Haiti

FEB 05: SLATE REPORTS ON THE VITAL ROLE LOCAL RADIO STATIONS ARE PLAYING IN THE LIVES OF HAITIANS

2010-02-05T16:30:00.000-08:00

SLATE.COM, Haitian Radio Returns to the Air

FEB 03: "LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR", PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM DR LYON OF PARTNERS IN HEALTH

2010-02-03T17:25:00.000-08:00

full article via

Partners-In-Health's site Stand With Haiti

PIH physician Evan Lyon sent this message shortly after his return to the U.S. after two weeks providing medical care in Port-au-Prince following the earthquake.

It is possible to imagine, even now in these darkest weeks, that something good may come. Many of our patients said out loud to me, sometimes for me to hear but more often just thinking out loud with another human being: “Bondye kite nou kanmpe.” God left us standing. Most still wondered if it would remain true. Would they still die of an injury, or would another aftershock take us all? I had the feeling many people couldn't believe they were still alive. But some went so far as to say: “God left us standing for some reason.”

I think this is the biggest job for all of us that care about Haiti right now: to remain open and committed. In solidarity. With compassion. With tremendous love.

It seems reasonable to me at this point to consider more than 200,000 dead and 1.5 - 2 million homeless and displaced. There is pressure on the infrastructure of the entire nation with so many fleeing the city to live with family in the countryside. Much of Port-au-Prince and Jacmel need to be rebuilt. I understand that Leogane is nearly completely gone. We need to stand with Haiti for a long time to come.

As an individual, I do not know any single faith. But I work from faith just the same. The Christian tradition puts one rule before all others: “Love your neighbor.” I have never worked with the kind of vital, intimate spiritual support I have felt over the past few weeks, beside our brilliant and fierce colleagues.

The Buddhist tradition offers a teaching that's been very close to me while working in Port-au-Prince. “When your heart breaks, it can break open or it can break closed.” I feel very sad for everyone whose heart has broken closed. The pain is serious, crippling. Everyone who has watched the news or has friends or family in Haiti has touched the edge of this pain. Everyone who has seen the broken bodies and buildings, who has inhaled the dust and stench of dying in and around Port-au-Prince knows this even more intimately. Those of us lucky enough to be alive now may have to carry some of this pain for the rest of our lives.

I know my heart has broken open enough to let me work, to stay upright and moving forward with the hope of helping. When we could not help, which was often, I still felt open to witness, to listen, to offer my presence and kindness.

One evening, about eight days after the earthquake, I stopped at the bedside of an elderly woman who was perhaps in her early 80s. She was scraped and bruised. Her foot had been crushed, but had been well cared for, and she hadn't required surgery. She had a large bandage and was clearly in a lot of pain (the hospital still had very limited pain medications beyond Tylenol and ibuprofen). But at least now she was in a tent and on a bed and receiving care from wonderful nurses and doctors. I held her face and spoke softly. She held mine back and looked at me straight in the eye. She said, “We're alive. We're alive. We're alive.” All I could think to say back was, “I know. We're alive.”

FEB 03: SHELTER AND RECOVERY IN HAITI_NY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHY

2010-02-03T15:15:00.000-08:00

Workers clearing away a house in the Canape Vert area of Port-Au-Prince. Photograph by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times.

Complete photography slideshow at THE NEW YORK TIMES

FEB 02: SHELTERBOX UPDATE

2010-02-02T10:05:00.000-08:00

Soldiers from the US Military's 82nd Airborne Division unload ShelterBoxes in Port au Prince, Haiti. Photograph by Mark Pearson

SHELTERBOX, Update From Haiti

FEB 01: A FUNERAL CEREMONY

2010-02-01T23:30:00.000-08:00

FEB 01: AFTER 4 DAY SUSPENSION, US TO RESUME MEDEVAC FLIGHTS FOR CRITICALLY INJURED

2010-02-01T22:56:00.000-08:00

via REUTERS / NY TIMES:

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - The U.S. government said on Sunday it would resume military evacuation flights to the United States for badly injured Haitian earthquakevictims after a four-day suspension over cost and treatment questions.

The White House said the flights were expected to begin again within 12 hours. Medical workers in Haiti had said the suspension put seriously injured patients at risk.

"Having received assurances that additional capacity exists both here and among our international partners, we determined that we can resume these critical flights," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.

FEB 01: CNN VIDEO

2010-02-01T21:45:00.000-08:00

JAN 31: SEATTLE VOLUNTEER DOCTOR SAYS FOLLOW UP SURGERY AND CARE URGENT FOR AMPUTEES, SEATTLE TIMES

2010-01-31T23:45:00.000-08:00

THE SEATTLE TIMES, Seattle Doctor Fears For Fate Of Haitian Amputees

JAN 31: CNN VIDEO ON US AIRLIFT SUSPENSION

2010-01-31T23:00:00.001-08:00

JAN 31: UN TRIES NEW PLAN TO PREVENT FOOD RIOTS

2010-01-31T23:00:00.000-08:00

USA Today, U.N. tries voucher system to prevent food riots in Haiti

JAN 31: THE CHAOS AND THE CALM_NY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHY

2010-01-31T17:00:00.000-08:00

The United Nations began a new system of distributing food to reduce the chaos that has taken place in the past few weeks. Coupons that were distributed on Saturday could be redeemed for bags of rice at locations in Port-au-Prince. A woman was delighted to receive a 55-pound bag of rice during a United Nations food distribution at the Canapé Vert park in Port-au-Prince. Photograph by Ruth Fremson for The New York Times

A man used a broken cinder block to get a better view outside the Assembly of God church during the service.
Photograph by Damon Winter for The New York Times

The NY Times captures the process of food distribution as the UN attempts to prevent food riots and insure women are getting their share. And they photograph the quiet moments as people wait in line, find time to pray and reflect.

The New York Times, full photography essay, Coupon System Under Way In Haiti