HAITI - Already Destitute Country finds itself Staggered by Devastation

[countryjake]

pics of Haiti from here: http://article.wn.com/view/2008/09/11/Already_destitute_country_finds_itself_staggered_by_devastat/












Thursday, September 11, 2008

GONAIVES, Haiti — Their cupboards were virtually bare before the winds started whipping, the skies opened up and this seaside city filled like a cauldron with thick brown smelly muck.

Suffering long ago became normal here, passed down through the generations, picked up by children who learn that crying does no good.

But the enduring spirit of the people of Gonaïves is being tested by a string of recent hurricanes - Faye, Gustav, Hanna and Ike are the names Haitians now spit out like curses - that made a bad situation all the worse.

After four fierce storms in less than a month, the little that many people had has turned to nothing at all. Their humble homes are under water, forcing them onto the roofs. School is canceled. Hunger is intense. Difficult lives have become untenable ones and, on top of all that, hurricane season just reached the traditional halfway mark.



http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/10/america/haiti.php


the slide show:

http://article.wn.com/view/2008/09/11/Already_destitute_country_finds_itself_staggered_by_devastat/


CNN videos:

Desperation grows as flooded Haiti city awaits aid
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/09/09/haiti.gonaives.flood/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

accompanying article:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/09/09/haiti.gonaives.flood/index.html#cnnSTCText


Haiti gets much-needed hurricane relief supplies
http://edition1.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/09/05/haiti.aid/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

accompanying article:
http://edition1.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/09/05/haiti.aid/index.html#cnnSTCText





Suggestions for donating:

The Lambi Fund of Haiti
http://www.lambifund.org/

Pan American Relief - Pan American Development Foundation
http://www.panamericanrelief.org/

United Nations - World Food Programme
http://www.wfp.org/english/?ModuleID=137&Key=2927

International Committee Red Cross
http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/haiti-news-090908!OpenDocument



Anyone with any more suggestions of trusted aid groups or charities, please chime in!



Other DU topics on Haiti, with more information:

Haiti is now just like New Orleans after Katrina... 'In pictures: Haiti relief'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3938196&mesg_id=3938196

Over 500 people have died in Haiti
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3940447&mesg_id=3940447

If you want to donate to STORM RELIEF IN HAITI, please consider the LAMBI FUND
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3951873&mesg_id=3951873



ARIANA CUBILLOS/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - Children line up for food and supplies from U.N. peacekeepers Wednesday in Gonaives, Haiti. Four storms in less than a month have caused widespread flooding and killed at least 300 in the country.

[bananas]

1. Amy Goodman interviewed Dr. Paul Farmer

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/10/haiti_struggles_with_humanitarian_disaster_in

September 10, 2008
Haiti Struggles with Humanitarian Disaster in Aftermath of Deadly Storms

In Haiti, as many as 1,000 people have died and an estimated one million left homeless after the impoverished country was hit by four major storms and hurricanes in less than a month. We speak to the renowned physician Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, a group that provides free medical care in Haiti. After visiting Gonaives over the weekend, Dr. Farmer wrote, “After 25 years spent working in Haiti and having grown up in Florida, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as painful as what I just witnessed.”

<snip>

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Paul Farmer, professor of medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School, cofounder of Partners in Health. The updates are on the website www.pih.org

[countryjake]

2. Thanks for that! Good to hear Amy bringing this to our attention!

There's been flooding in parts of Haiti that have never even been affected before in hurricanes, and these four storms have totally wiped out their agriculture and food resources. Police state that more than 500 have died in Gonaives, alone, and many higher mountain areas are still unreachable, so no accurate death toll can be given. The Red Cross is saying that the storm surge simply washed people away, and while health departments are giving low figures, the Red Cross says the missing is easily over 1000 people, with 450 dead in Gonaives.

Lack of clean water, food and medicine is going to be the killer for months to come!

That Partners In Health looks like a good source for updates and a worthy place to donate for Haiti!

http://www.pih.org/inforesources/news/Haiti_hurricane_update_09-11.html

[XemaSab]

3. Doctors Without Borders is another good charity

Fourteen days after Tropical Storm Gustav made landfall, followed by Tropical Storm Hanna and then Hurricane Ike last week, many areas are still inaccessible in devastated Haiti.

Since arriving in the northern Haitian city of Gonaïves on September 4, one of the worst affected areas in the country, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams have carried out 641 medical consultations and performed 25 surgical procedures. Half of the people screened so far by MSF have suffered at least minor injuries. The remaining patients are suffering from diarrhea (and related dehydration), respiratory diseases, infections, and skin problems linked to polluted water, with such cases on the increase. While most of the patients are adults, an increasing number are children.

With floodwaters now receding slightly, people are beginning to return to Gonaïves, adding additional stress on already strained health and sanitation facilities. Temporary health clinics in some schools are lacking basic materials and equipment. MSF teams have donated medical materials and plans are underway to open a field hospital in Gonaïves.

Currently, MSF has five medical personnel (two doctors and three nurses) and six logistical staff (three general logisticians and three water and sanitation specialists) in Gonaïves.

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=3104

[countryjake]

4. Right! I forgot that one.

Thanks for that suggestion, it sounds as tho repercussions from these storms will last for months. I heard on the news that many women and female children are now coming down with infections from wading around in waist-deep waters, so antibiotics and other medicines will be desperately needed, along with the doctors to treat them.

[countryjake]

5. Yéle Haiti - Wyclef Jean foundation "Haiti Storm Relief Fund"

http://www.yele.org/news/index.html

September 09, 2008

WYCLEF JEAN ANNOUNCES STORM RELIEF FUND FOR HAITI

NEW YORK (September 9, 2008) – The storms that have battered Haiti in the past few weeks have left more than 500 dead and wreaked havoc in the lives of more than 600,000 people who have been displaced by flooding or cut off from food supplies. Haitian President René Preval has appealed for help from the international community, saying the country faces a "catastrophe".

Wyclef Jean – musician, Haitian Goodwill Ambassador and founder of Yéle Haiti – has launched the "Haiti Storm Relief Fund" to provide food, water, purification tablets, tents, blankets, medical supplies, hygiene kits as well as funds to a number of non-profit organizations working on the ground to respond to the emergency. Yéle Haiti is working closely with the Pan American Development Foundation and the World Food Programme in this effort, and in consultation with the Haitian government's emergency management authorities.

Yéle's Storm Relief Fund has already sponsored food, supplies and water to assist victims in the South-East, including Jakmèl, Cayes-Jakmèl, Marigot and La Vallee. A second wave of support is currently underway in and around Jakmèl in cooperation with the Mayor of this resort community. Containers with emergency supplies are being shipped into the country over the next few weeks as individuals and corporations begin responding to Wyclef Jean's call for donations. Within days Yéle Haiti's teams will begin an intensive operation of emergency food distributions with food staples supplied by the World Food Programme.

"My country is facing a serious catastrophe at the moment," said Mr. Jean, "and we urgently require assistance. But the long-term catastrophe is that we have less than two percent tree cover, and without restoring our forests we will always be susceptible to mudslides and flash floods from storms and hurricanes."


http://www.yele.org/

[countryjake]

6. Kick!

[countryjake]

7. another kick

[countryjake]

8. "The emergency is not now. The emergency will be a week from now"

Haitians who lost homes to floods find more misery in shelters with no food, water, medicine

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-haiti-floods,1,3901619.story

September 11, 2008

~snip~

But Latortue is too weak and in too much pain. He lost his mother and a daughter in Tropical Storm Hanna, and sent his three surviving daughters — ages 3, 5 and 8 — to a relative in another part of town.

Then diarrhea set in, and the fever. A fungus erupted across the right side of his chest. A woman in the church applied a concoction of yellow berries, but that did little to ease the pain.

Visited by a reporter three days ago, he had been fully functional, gesturing as he spoke in a relatively clean black polo shirt. By Thursday, he shook under a muddy white blanket and wore no shirt.

He passed out from time to time, and was unable to walk even a few feet (meters) across the dirt-streaked linoleum floor.

[malaise]

9. It is unbelievably bad in Haiti

and the stupid Peace Keepers had them line up behind razor wire for relief. Of course when the pushing started people were stuck in the wire.

[countryjake]

10. Well, considering those "peacekeepers" were shooting rubber bullets and...

lobbing gas at hungry people only a few months ago, over food, I'm not surprised they're already preparing for what the authorities most fear. I have a feeling the government is calculating that the more potential infections from razor wire they can inflict, the less control they'll have to exert later. More and more this starving is looking deliberate...even today, they are still claiming "no access" when individuals clearly have been making it in with relief.

Just like Katrina, as tho the helicopter had yet to be invented.

Haiti was in a state of desperation before this hurricane season...now the famine begins.

[SammyWinstonJack]

11. Oh my.

:-(