Haiti

[Al-khiyal]

Haïti :
L’Algérie fait un don d’un million de dollars aux sinistrés

Jeudi 21 Janvier 2010 -- L’Algérie a offert un don d’un million de dollars aux sinistrés de Haïti après le séisme qui a frappé l’île il y a plus d’une semaine. Dans un communiqué rendu public jeudi 21 janvier à Alger, le ministère des Affaires Etrangères a indiqué que l’Algérie a également acheminé, « par les voies appropriées », un don humanitaire d’urgence. Une délégation d’une vingtaine de médecins algériens attend toujours le feu vert des autorités pour aller à Haïti. La sécurité des délégations humanitaire ne serait pas encore garantie à cause de la multiplication des actes de pillages et de violences. Selon le ministère des Affaires Etrangères, des mesures ont été prises au lendemain de la catastrophe « pour localiser et porter assistance aux ressortissants algériens » à travers les ambassades de Caracas et de Washington.

[Al-khiyal]

Haïti :
L’Algérie fait un don d’un million de dollars aux sinistrés

Algeria donates $1 million to Haiti earthquake relief effort

January 21, 2010 -- Algeria granted one million dollars in emergency humanitarian aid to victims of last week's Haiti earthquake, the Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday (January 21st) in Algiers. "Algeria assured Haitian President Rene Preval of its sympathy and full availability and expressed the deep emotion of the Algerian people regarding this terrible disaster," the ministry statement said. A delegation of two dozen Algerian doctors may also go to Haiti if security conditions improve.

[Al-khiyal]

Haiti earthquake creating a generation of amputees, doctors warn

January 21, 2010 -- When the earthquake struck Haiti last Tuesday Melene Samedi was shopping for shoes in downtown Port-au-Prince. As the ground began to shake, she froze. A piece of concrete, ripped off a building by the force of the quake, struck her leg, fracturing the bone and wrenching it through her skin. Bystanders rushed the 29-year-old to Port-au-Prince's Hôpital de l'Université but it was too late. The following day surgeons were forced to amputate, just below the knee. "I don't have a job and I don't have the house. And now this," lamented her husband Schiller Polycarpe, 27, standing by his wife's tatty bed in an improvised ward in the hospital car park. "There is no help from the government.

As Port-au-Prince's largest hospital, the Hôpital de l'Université, or HUEH, has borne the brunt of casualties from the earthquake and doctors are struggling to cope with the seemingly endless stream of new arrivals. More than a week after the earthquake the HUEH is at the centre of a health catastrophe that many surgeons believe will leave as many as 200,000 Haitians without at least one of their limbs. Aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières this week claimed that the last time surgeons carried out so many amputations was during the Crimean war. "We are in big trouble," admitted Dr Philip Guilleu, a volunteer surgeon from New York, who said he had personally performed 30 amputations during the last few days. "It is overwhelming."

Even before passing through the hospital's green iron gates, it is easy to sense what lies ahead. In the street outside, hundreds of Haitians cluster around fresh-faced U.S. soldiers clutching M16 assault rifles. The men beg for their families to be admitted to the hospital. The women clutch pieces of orange peel to their noses to mask the stench of the decomposing bodies that have been abandoned on the cracked pavement or are still buried in the rubble of surrounding buildings. Move through the gates and the true extent of the crisis becomes clear. Hundreds of seriously injured patients and their relatives pack into the hospital's narrow car park. In the scorching midday sun, they lie on battered school desks, filthy mattresses and ageing hospital beds. Many have lost one or more limbs. Others have been badly deformed by falling rubble. Nearly all await surgery in one of HUEH's five operating theatres.

On Wednesday the queue was more than 1,000 patients long. Among them was an unidentified female patient whose lips had been almost completely shorn off by falling debris. "She's got an infection and she's got maggots in there," said Daniel Wiersma, a 24-year-old nurse from Michigan, as he peeled back her bandages. "I call this war surgery," said Dr George Bouttin, a 73-year-old surgeon from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who estimates that 95% of those coming in with crushing injuries were having to undergo amputations, partly as a result of infections. "It is guillotine-type amputation." Another of HUEH's emergency recruits, Jean-Paul Bonnet, an American GP, said the U.S. government urgently needed to intervene to help Haiti's new generation of amputees. "There will have to be rehabilitation centres. We will have to train these people to walk again. We will have to train these people to survive again," he said. "Ironically, if we can find any good out of the war in Iraq perhaps it is the advances in helping amputees … Hopefully those nine years of education will have trained us enough to help this poor country. Bring us the technology. Bring us the prostheses. Bring us those people who know how to train these people to function and walk again."

As if the appalling injuries on display were not enough, doctors say they are now having to contend with looting. Following Wednesday's aftershocks, which struck at around 6am, the hospital's guards fled, fearing another big earthquake. Immediately the crowds outside poured through the unguarded gates towards the main building. "They came into our operating rooms and stole whatever they found," said Bouttin. "The oxygen tanks were gone. Everything was gone. I understand why they steal … but they steal useless things for them. I mean, what are they going to do with an oxygen tank? What are they going to do with intravenous antibiotics?"

With surgeons continuing to perform amputation upon amputation, Samedi and her family were left to reflect on their future in "section four", where the only privacy comes in the shape of a black tarpaulin draped over her bed and where the stench of putrefying flesh hangs in the air. What would the family do now? "Now we will wait," Polycarpe, who had spent the previous eight days sleeping on the concrete floor next to his wife, said bluntly. His father-in-law, 56-year-old Neider Samedi, was more reflective. "God gives and God takes," he said of his daughter's injuries. And what had he said to his God since the earthquake? He shrugged. "Merci."

[Al-khiyal]

Haïti :
L’anonymat des milliers de morts dans les fosses communes

Vendredi 22 Janvier 2010 -- C’est un flot ininterrompu de cadavres qui vient se déverser chaque jour sur le site de Titanyen, une colline laissée à l’abandon au nord de Port-au-Prince. Alors, submergés par cette tâche macabre et traumatisante, des ouvriers s’activent sur des pelleteuses pour recouvrir de terre, à la va-vite, ces monticules de corps de femmes, d’enfants et d’hommes, anonymes, sans sépulture, avec la douloureuse certitude que nul ne pourra jamais venir les réclamer. Pour la seule journée de mercredi, pas moins de 10 000 victimes du séisme du 12 janvier ont fini dans les fosses communes improvisées à Titanyen, des remblais de terre crayeuse desquels dépassent des bras ou des jambes, signe de la précipitation et de l’ampleur de la tâche. « J’ai vu tant et tant d’enfants. Je ne peux pas dormir la nuit et, quand je peux, c’est un cauchemar sans fin », raconte l’un de ces fossoyeurs, Foultone Fequiert, 38 ans, le visage recouvert par un T-shirt pour échapper à l’omniprésente odeur. « Pour la seule journée d’hier, j’ai reçu 10 000 corps. » Inhumés anonymement, sans cérémonie religieuse, sans adieux des proches. Les ONG, les agences internationales, les gouvernements étrangers, les églises, ont beau souligner la nécessité de tout faire pour identifier les corps avant de les enterrer, les ouvriers n’en ont ni le temps ni l’envie. Deux experts du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge (CICR) ont invité les autorités haïtiennes à faire remplir des formulaires-types à propos des corps afin que les familles, plus tard, puissent les identifier et sachent où ils sont enterrés. La procédure préconisée prévoit de photographier vêtements, bijoux et tout signe particulier de reconnaissance, et d’indiquer où le corps a été retrouvé et où il est inhumé. Des responsables religieux, que ce soit des prêtres catholiques ou des prêtres vaudous, ont dénoncé le recours aux fosses communes comme mode généralisé d’inhumation, procédé contraire à toutes les croyances haïtiennes. « C’est dégradant, indécent et inhumain », déplore Max Beauvoir, responsable de la principale organisation de prêtres vaudous d’Haïti, interrogé par Associated Press.

[NoonaElMajnoona]

Ive been following this story quite closely and I have to say that the pictures in the Daily Mail are absolutely heart-breaking.
We've organised a cake sale in my office at work to donate all moneys to helping Haiti...I know its minor but every little helps...There going to be some super expensive cakes

[Al-khiyal]

Children missing from Haiti hospitals

January 22, 2010 -- The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Friday children have gone missing from hospitals in Haiti following the devastating earthquake in the country, raising fears they are being trafficked for adoption abroad. "We have documented around 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals and not with their own family at the time," said UNICEF adviser Jean Luc Legrand. "UNICEF has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children in Haiti that existed already beforehand,” he said. "Unfortunately, many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption market." The UN agency said it has warned countries around the world during the past week not to step up adoptions from Haiti in the immediate wake of the quake, ABC News reported. Despite the warning, many fast-tracking adoption procedures are already under way in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States. Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said child enslavement and trafficking in Haiti was "an existing problem and could easily emerge as a serious issue over the coming weeks and months." The UN mission in Haiti has stepped up surveillance of roads, UNICEF officials said. "We have seen over the past years many children being taken out of the country without any legal procedure," Legrand said. "This is going on. This is happening now. We are starting to have the first evidence of that, this is unquestionable." He was unable to give details about 15 children missing from hospitals or their conditions.

[Al-khiyal]

يعمل لدى البنك الدولي ومقيم بكندا
خبير دولي جزائري من بني صاف مفقود في زلزال هايتي

علمت "الشروق اليومي" من مصادر مؤكدة أن خبيرا جزائريا بالبنك العالمي من مدينة بني صاف في ولاية عين تموشنت مفقود في زلزال هايتي الأخير.

وحسب عائلة الضحية، فإن المفقود بلهاشمي بوسيف البالغ من العمر 61 سنة والمقيم مع زوجته و3 أولاد بكندا، يعمل كخبير محاسبة بالبنك الدولي العالمي أوكلت له مهمة دراسة المشاريع لصالح البنك المذكور بجرز هايتي في المدة الأخيرة، حيث تنقل من كندا في رحلة جوية إلى هايتي صبيحة 12 جانفي من هذا الشهر، اذ توجه من المطار مباشرة إلى فندق قريب للإقامة خلال مهمة العمل. وحسب عائلة المفقود فقد كان الاتصال معه من خلال المكالمة الهاتفية التي أجراها من الفندق المذكور إثر وصوله مباشرة مع عائلته بكندا وطمأنها على أنه "وصل بخير وسيخلد للراحة كي يباشر عمله في اليوم الموالي"، إلا أن قوة الزلزال الذي ضرب المنطقة بـ 7.5 على سلم رشتر حال دون أداء بوسيف عمله، ولا يزال في تعداد المفقودين لحد الآن، كما لا تزال جهود عائلته بكندا متواصلة للعثور عليه سواء حيا أو ميتا، فالمهم أن تسترجع جثته، لا قدر الله، لكي يتم نقلها ودفنها بالجزائر حسب رغبة أبنائه وزوجته الجزائرية. ومن خلال تصريحات رئيس هايتي وآخر الإحصائيات منذ مساء الثلاثاء أي يوم الهزة العنيفة التي ضربت الجزيرة فقد تجاوز عدد القتلى 100 ألف قتيل و200 مفقود أغلبهم لا يزالون تحت الأنقاض، حيث من المحتمل جدا أن يكون الجزائري بلهاشمي بوسيف ابن مدينة بني صاف بينهم.