Check out our story at : http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/28-7
Palace & Tent City
Tent cities around Port au Prince
L’Orphelinoit Notre-Dame du Perpetuel Secours
Croux du Bouquet, Port au Prince
Rev. Bourdeau and children at orphanage thank us for coming to visit
Tanya Thurman, my daughter, & Tyler Westbrook
Just one of the thousands of infants and children living in tents, or waiting for tents, in Haiti
Tanya and I
Reposting from Common Dreams:
by Bill Quigley
890 million. Amount of international debt that Haiti owes creditors. Finance ministers from developing countries announced they will forgive $290 million. Source: Wall Street Journal
644 million. Donations for Haiti to private organizations have exceed $644 million. Over $200 million has gone to the Red Cross, who had 15 people working on health projects in Haiti before the earthquake. About $40 million has gone to Partners in Health, which had 5,000 people working on health in Haiti before the quake. Source: New York Times.
1 million. People still homeless or needing shelter in Haiti. Source: MSNBC.
1 million. People who have been given food by the UN World Food Program in Port au Prince – another million in Port au Prince still need help. Source: UN World Food Program.
300,000. People injured in the earthquake, reported by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. Source: CNN.
212,000. People reported killed by earthquake by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. Source: CNN..
63,000. There are 63,000 pregnant women among the people displaced by the earthquake. 7,000 women will deliver their children each month. Source: UN Populations Fund.
17,000. Number of United States troops stationed on or off coast in Haiti, down from a high of 22,000. Source: AFP.
9,000. United Nations troops in Haiti. Source: Miami Herald.
7,000. Number of tents distributed by United Nations. Miami Herald. President Preval of Haiti has asked for 200,000 tents. Source: Reuters.
4,000. Number of amputations performed in Haiti since the earthquake. Source: AFP.
900. Number of latrines that have been dug for the people displaced from their homes. Another 950,000 people still need sanitation. Source: New York Times.
75. An hourly wage of 75 cents per hour is paid by the United Nations Development Program to people in Haiti who have been hired to help in the clean up. The UNDP is paying 30,000 people to help clean up Haiti, 180 Haitian Gourdes ($4.47) for six hours of work. The program hopes to hire 100,000 people. Source: United Nations News Briefing.
1.25. The U.S. is pledged to spend as much as $379 million in Haitian relief. This is about $1.25 for each person in the United States. Source: Canadian Press.
1. For every one dollar of U.S. aid to Haiti, 42 cents is for disaster assistance, 33 cents is for the U.S. military, 9 cents is for food, 9 cents is to transport the food, 5 cents to pay Haitians to help with recovery effort, 1 cent is for the Haitian government and ½ a cent is for the government of the Dominican Republic. Source: Associated Press.
Bill has visited Haiti numerous times working for human rights. He is legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. His email is quigley77@gmail.com
Today we loaded up Paul’s truck. He is a Haitian that my daughter and I met on our first bus ride into the Jimani Hospital that we are working out of in DR. We had tons of supplies of food, meds, toys, clothes, and shoes for the orphans in Port au Prince. We aren’t busy at this hospital right now. The DR won’t let any more Haitians in and that leaves about 50 patients with over 100 medical staff. So we took 4 med students with us. We went to the orphanage and the med students brought new shoes for all 53 orphans. They were crocs and sandals. The kids were so excited they were styling around the rubble. Then these students gave them candy. We had to make our way to the epicenter of PAP with them.
Tanya and I with the Heroic Dr. Margaret
Took them to the main hospital and the chief of the ER was so happy to see them. They got 1000 new patients and needed many more hands. They went to work setting up an ER tent. And we waved goodbye. Next we made our way through the horrendous traffic to the palace again to meet my husband’s friend’s sister to give her a much-needed tent. We handed off the tent and she cried but the homeless across from the palace started to crowd around wanting tents. So we had to run.
We headed up to the mountains to find even worse damage if you could believe it. Haitians were digging out their own homes with small shovels and their own trucks and rebuilding themselves. No one, I mean no one, was helping them. The sight was wonderful and infuriating at the same time. Billions of dollars from the world to Haiti and it isn’t there.
We headed back to the border because it closes at 6 pm and for 2 nights we had to bribe the border guards to get back to the home base hospital. We had to stop and deliver all of the remainder of aid we had to a tent city doctor whose house was destroyed and who lives in her office. We gave her peroxide, ointments, food and feminine napkins for the tents. She cried and said there are so many good people and they need all the help they can get because the future will be hardest.
We headed for the border with DR and got shut out when we got there at 9 pm. We had to use my NYPD card from my husband to get over the Haitian border. Then we called friends at the hospital to pick us up on the DR side. We walked about a quarter of a mile in the dark, me and Tanya, to another gate but they wouldn’t open it. Our friends said if we could fit through a hole in the bottom of the gate the guard would let us in. So we crawled through on our sides as a machine gun was pointed at us. But they let us in then and we ran to the truck and laughed all the way back to have beers and feed stray dogs.
The NY Times on the sanitation problems to come in the tent cities.
Mounds of Rubble
Scene of Devastation
Another Scene of Devastation
Some of the supplies we left with Dr. Margaret
There’s lots to say and it will come soon… but in the meantime here’s a photo of me courtesy Tyler Westbrook, with some new friends.
Follow my tweets live on the ground at @elainebrower.
Military drives in new trucks not carrying aid only guns buildings are destroyed but no equipment haitians still digging themselves out…
Scenes from market day at the border.
Also, check out this article from Davey D.’s Hip Hop corner:
Camp in Port Au Prince
Tons and tons of rubble
Orphanage Notre Dame du Perpetual Secours
Children
Elaine is traveling to Port au Prince Wednesday, February 17.
See this from Arun Gupta on Alternet:
More Pain for Devastated Haiti: Under the Pretense of Disaster Relief, U.S. Running a Military Occupation
Official denials aside, the United States has embarked on a new military occupation of Haiti thinly cloaked as disaster relief. While both the Pentagon and the United Nations claimed more troops were needed to provide “security and stability” to bring in aid, according to nearly all independent observers in the field, violence was never an issue.
The NY Times reported last week:
Doctors Haunted by Haitians They Couldn’t Help
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.
“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.
Why are people still being amputated without anesthesia and without proper communication, translation and consent? This is something I want to find out.
Another thing we want to learn more about; what is going on with the missionaries flooding the country? The NY Times reported yesterday:
Missionaries Go to Haiti, Followed by Scrutiny
“You had missionary doctors parachuting in here doing amputations rather than setting or treating wounds because they knew their charter jet was leaving in two days and they would not be able to oversee follow-up,” said Dr. Scott Nelson, an American orthopedic surgeon and Adventist missionary, as he lifted a moaning man onto a soiled stretcher.
“The new or short-term groups see themselves as being there to save souls first and lives second,” said Jonathan J. Bonk, director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven.
More photos. Beautiful landscape, so much trauma.
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