PEORIA -- Many people from central Illinois are involved in charities that attempt to help Haiti. Below are some accounts of what's really going on there. The first is from Dr. John Carroll, a founder of Haitian Hearts, which arranges for heart surgery for Haitians. He writes:
1. None of what happened or is happening in Haiti is surprising
to me. The courage of the Haitian people during adverse circumstances
is what I am used to seeing.
2. The international community is a day late and a dollar short
as usual. Haiti's government is mainly absent right now. Haiti's
government has actually been absent for many years. The Haitian people
have no trust in their government whatsoever. Haitian police are
executing looters right now. Haitian police have told the people of
Cite Soleil to kill gang members that have escaped from the prison when
it fell.
Building codes, infrastructure, clean water, basic things needed
to be in place like humans deserve, decades before the quake. The quake
would still have happened, but recovery would have been much quicker
and less lives lost.
3. And why is PAP so densely populated? Because people can't
survive in the countryside because the trees have been cut down,
deforested, because they use the trees to make charcoal to cook. But
with deforestation, the erosion is terrible during the rainy season
and the Haitian farmers can't plant and grow crops. So they can't live
and wonder in from the country side and live in massive shanty towns in
the capital. The shanty towns, frequently named for the area in the
countryside (province) where they come from, may have hundreds of
thousands of people.
Haitian farmers have been hurt by food that comes in from overseas
and sold on the market for much less than the Haitian farmer can sell
his grain. Haitian farmers work by hand and hoe, not big tractors. They
have no good fertilizer.
So if PAP, which may be able to accommodate 400,000 people, did not
have 3 million people living on top of each other, there would be less
chaos and less death now because the epicenter was just a few miles
west of PAP. Now, people are fleeing the capital to head out to the
pathetic and poor countryside. The roads are damaged even more, the
villages are flattened south and west of the capital, and people are
even leaving on overcrowded ferries. And we know that overcrowded Haitian
ferries don't historically do well. One trip in the early 90's, I saw
hundreds of bodies at the General Hospital of people that drowned on a
ferry called the Neptune...several thousand people lost their lives on
the Neptune, and it barely made international news.
4. The Haitian elite of course has not been interviewed by the
media. They really control Haiti and are hunkered down in their big
homes, surrounded by security, or have already left Haiti for New York,
Montreal, Miami, etc. It used to be said that 40 influential Haitian
families controlled 40% of the wealth in Haiti. What plans do Haitians
elite have to rebuild Haiti? They have no plan of course. They have
their textile factories, etc, which with globalization enslave the
Haitian people all the more.
5. The stages of Disaster Medicine are playing out in Haiti.
First there is the acute injuries and confusion. Extrication of victims
is on everyone's mind. Now we are entering Stage II of infection, lack
of water, new water borne diseases, lack of security, lack of housing,
new orphans, and what we all forget is the psychological trauma of
surviving an earthquake while your family doesn't.
6. Maria and I have probably received or sent 400-500 emails or
phone calls in the last 8 days. My patients call from Haiti or send an
indirect message through a friend or send a message via internet. Many
Haitian Hearts patients are homeless and living on the street. You can
listen to a voice mail I received last night from a Haitian friend
living on the sidewalks begging for help. They have lost all of their
medicine and all of their material goods. Of all the patients we have
played a roll in bringing to the US for surgery, we have lost one 7
year old girl who was killed instantly in her house as the quake hit.
She had been operated in Saint Louis a couple of years ago.
7. Haiti's future is uncertain to say the least. It will take
decades to "recover".At least one silver lining is that the world for
the first time has seen the courage of the Haitian people and their
suffering. Most of Haiti's days have been bad during the last 29 years
that I have been working there. This will be the worst natural disaster
ever recorded in the Americas in my opinion.
These are a few of my thoughts about the disaster....
Again, an ounce of prevention would have been worth a pound of
cure...the camera crews will leave shortly, and Haitians will have some
help, but not enough.
-- Dr. John Carroll
This commentary is from Pat Sloan of Hands Helping Haiti. The website gives some information, and here's more:
Our group is a 501(c)(3). We have people involved primarily
between Peoria and Rockford, Illinois. We sponsor a clinic in Hinche
and just built a school last year near Jacmel. We sponsor a number of
children and the school as well. We have 4 Haitian staff.
Thank
goodness our school and staff are OK. All the children we've found
have been OK, although most of their houses have been damaged or
destroyed. We stay somewhat in contact, but it is very difficult,
because the cell phone system is not working well and they are not
getting new fuel for their generators yet.
We do at least one medical
clinic per year which involves 12 - 20 from the states and about the
same number from Haiti. We will be rescheduling our trip for as soon
as we can. We've been preparing for months to go down Feb. 1, but that
won't happen now.
I help with the clinic and the school construction, but mostly now
about our water filter project which we were on the verge of starting
production. It will be somewhat delayed, but this earthquake just
points out even more that safe drinking water is of utmost importance.
-- Pat Sloan
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