Haiti

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Haiti revival after quake could take generations says UN chief

January 29, 2010 -- Rebuilding Haiti will take generations because the earthquake-shattered country was starting from "below zero" and logistics remained a "nightmare", the United Nations warned today. The bleak long-term assessment came as basic medical supplies in Port-au-Prince ran dangerously low and concerns grew of a public health calamity with the onset of the rainy season. Several hospitals and clinics reported shortages of painkillers and antibiotics for patients with fractures, amputated limbs and infections. Relief agencies said there was also an urgent need for tents. Edmond Mulet, acting head of the UN mission in Haiti, warned that emergency relief efforts were the start of a commitment that would be much longer than the international community might realise. "I think this is going to take many more decades … this is an enormous backwards step in Haiti's development," he told the BBC. "We will not have to start from zero but from below zero."

Foreign governments this week pledged to back a decade-long rebuilding effort but that timescale could need revising at a donor conference in the coming months. The U.S. military signalled plans to start transferring authority to the state and aid agencies within three to six months. The magnitude-seven quake on 12 January caused the deaths of an estimated 200,000 people, left 1.5 million homeless and 3 million in need of aid. It destroyed much of Haiti's infrastructure. Some 200,000 heavy-duty tents have been ordered to cope with the rainy season, which typically begins in May, and the hurricane season soon after. Only about a 10th of that number of tents has reached Haiti. Salvage crews have started clearing rubble in Port-au-Prince but with *three-quarters of the buildings mostly demolished the task is immense. There are plans for "tent cities" outside the capital and suggestions the city could be moved to a site less vulnerable to quakes. Some relatively unscathed neighbourhoods show a semblance of normality: markets, shops and banks were working today and schools were due to open on Monday. Water, food and medicine is reaching more of the improvised camps.

Mullet, who is also the UN's assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping, said coordination between Haitian police and UN troops was improving aid delivery but relief logistics remained a "nightmare". That was apparent in hospitals where doctors and nurses complained of scarce medical supplies as they struggled to treat 200,000 survivors in need of post-surgery medical care as well as an unaccounted number with untreated injuries. Nancy Fleurancois, a volunteer doctor at Jacmel, told a visiting UN official her team desperately needed antibiotics and surgical supplies. "You see people come here and they are at death's door," she said. "More help is needed." Kathleen Sejour, a hospital administrator, told AP: "Malaria is becoming a big problem and we don't have enough *anti-malaria drugs. Most of the kids right now have it. We had a good supply but we can't keep up."

Large amounts of aid have reached Haiti but the need is so vast, and the infrastructure so ruined, many survivors have been left to cope on their own. The maternal mortality rate was expected to jump. Unicef said the disaster was likely to have separated thousands of children from their parents or guardians, and the agency repeated warnings about the threat of child traffickers. Bo Viktor Nylund, Unicef's senior children protection adviser, said hospitals had been alerted. "We are informing all hospitals that they should not discharge unaccompanied children without getting in touch with us or the government." In Port-a-Prince, Solveig Routier, a Canadian child protection specialist from Plan International, said that her group had received reliable reports of at least 15 cases of children being snatched from hospitals. Aid groups estimate that there were 300,000 orphaned children here even before the recent disaster, and the devastation of Port-au-Prince means things have now become much worse. Following the earthquake dozens of children were taken to the Sunshine House, a cramped concrete social centre in Pétionville which is home to 44 orphaned or abandoned children. Sultane Ganthier, the orphanage's 77-year-old director, said she had had to turn away children for lack of space. "Many people have asked us to take children [since the quake]. But we can't do it. I can't handle it," she said.

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U.S. military halts Haiti evacuation

January 30, 2010 -- The U.S. military has halted flights carrying Haitian earthquake victims to the United States, apparently in a dispute over medical care costs. Captain Kevin Aandahl, spokesman for U.S. Transportation Command, said the evacuations were temporarily suspended on Wednesday. That was a day after Florida governor Charlie Crist asked the federal government to help pay for care. Captain Aandahl said that there were "some critical cases that were recommended stateside facility care or follow-up care" and that he understood "there were some states that were unwilling to approve transportation". He said the military couldn't "fly anyone without an accepting hospital on the other end". A spokesman for Mr Crist said that he was not aware of any hospital in Florida refusing patients.

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American Baptists held in Haiti after trying to take children out of country

January 31, 2010 -- A group of 10 American Baptists were being held in the Haitian capital today after trying take 33 children out of Haiti. The church group, most of them from Idaho, allegedly lacked the proper documents when they were arrested on Friday night in a bus along with children aged from two months to 12 years who had survived the earthquake. The group say they were setting up an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic. "In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing," the group's spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, told The Associated Press at the judicial police headquarters in the capital, where the Americans were being held pending a hearing tomorrow before a judge.

The Baptists' "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission" was described as an effort to save abandoned, traumatised children. Their plan was to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a 45-room hotel at Cabarete, a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, that they were converting into an orphanage, Silsby told the AP. Whether they realised it or not, these Americans – the first known to be taken into custody since the 12 January quake – put themselves in the middle of a firestorm in Haiti, where government leaders have suspended adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to child trafficking.

Silsby said the group, including members from Texas and Kansas, only had the best of intentions and paid no money for the children, whom she said they obtained from well-known Haitian pastor Jean Sanbil of the Sharing Jesus Ministries. Silsby, 40, of Boise, Idaho, was asked if she did not consider it naive to cross the border without adoption papers at a time when Haitians are so concerned about child trafficking. "By no means are we any part of that. That's exactly what we are trying to combat," she said. She said she had not been following news reports while in Haiti.

Social Affairs Minister Yves Cristallin told the AP that the Americans were suspected of taking part in an illegal adoption scheme. Cristallin said the 33 children were lodged late Saturday at an SOS Children's Village outside Port-au-Prince. SOS Children's Villages is a global nonprofit based in Austria. Many children in Haitian orphanages are not actually orphans but have been abandoned by family who cannot afford to care for them. Advocates both here and abroad caution that with so many people unaccounted for, adoptions should not go forward until it can be determined that the children have no relatives who can raise them. UNICEF and other NGOs have been registering children who may have been separated from their parents. Relief workers are locating children at camps housing the homeless around the capital and are placing them in temporary shelters while they try to locate their parents or a more permanent home.

The U.S. Embassy in Haiti sent consular officials, who met the detained Americans and gave them bug spray and field rations, according to Sean Lankford of Meridian, Idaho, whose wife and 18-year-old daughter were being held. "They have to go in front of a judge on Monday," Lankford told the AP. "There are allegations of child trafficking and that really couldn't be farther from the truth," he added. The children "were going to get the medical attention they needed. They were going to get the clothes and the food and the love they need to be healthy and to start recovering from the tragedy that just happened."

Haiti has imposed new controls on adoptions since the earthquake, which left thousands of children parentless or separated from their families. The government now requires the prime minister Max Bellerive to personally authorise the departure of any child as a way to prevent child trafficking. Silsby said they had documents from the Dominican government, but did not seek any paperwork from the Haitian authorities before taking the children to the border.

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Haiti doctors fear malaria and typhoid as rainy season arrives

January 31, 2010 -- Aid agencies are warning of an imminent health crisis in Haiti, as the onset of the rainy season brings fears of outbreaks of waterborne diseases in Port-au-Prince's squalid refugee camps. With up to a million Haitians thought to have lost their homes in the earthquake, and hundreds of thousands still living in 600 squatter settlements around the capital, aid officials warn that the arrival of rain could present them with a further medical crisis after hospitals were initially swamped with patients needing amputations or treatment for crushing injuries. Haiti's rains normally come in February and the prospect of bad weather has aid workers and homeless people scared. The hurricane season starts in July.

"If it rains, there will be a great deal of disease," said Dr Thierry Causse, a GP from the French Red Cross who is working at a field clinic near the Place St Pierre refugee camp in Pétionville, where rivers of urine flow through the square. "We are afraid of a typhoid epidemic, of a malaria epidemic. We have a lot of doctors here, but if there is an epidemic there will be a big problem. There could be a lot of dead people if it is not treated quickly and properly."

One of the largest refugee camps is in the city's football stadium, the Stade Sylvio Cator. On the pitch, thousands of homeless people have made shelters from tarpaulin, corrugated iron and rubble scavenged from fallen buildings. One family is living inside the cramped team dugout where Brazilian football stars such as Ronaldo once sat. "Where I lived is all gone," said Benita Saint-Cyr, 37, one of three women living in the dugout with dozens of children. "I'm not dead, so all I can do now is pray." Thervius Luckner, a community leader in the Place St Pierre camp, is also among the city's displaced population. "It always rains in February," he said. "I think it is only because of God that it hasn't rained so far. If it rains, people will be in trouble, the tents are not safe and some people don't even have tents. I got a message from a Haitian doctor to tell the people not to piss and **** in the camp because the kids will get sick."

The UN and the Haitian government say they are planning to move many of Port-au-Prince's homeless to camps outside the city, partly to avert risks of a serious epidemic, but in Place St Pierre such promises have yet to materialise. "We had an announcement from the mayor saying they were building houses for people whose homes were destroyed," said Luckner. "They took people's names, but we haven't heard anything yet." Around Luckner's shelter, a tiny cubicle made out of a black tarpaulin donated by a Buddhist relief group from Taiwan, live some of the people most at risk: mothers and their children, who spend the days playing in the filthy square. "The doctors haven't come yet," said Yolene Philemond, 22, mother of a one-year-old son, when asked if any doctors had visited offering immunisation jabs. "We hope they are coming." She pointed to a rash on her baby's arms. "He's infected. His body is cracked. I don't know what it is," said Philemond, whose house was levelled by the quake, killing one of her cousins.

"When there is a population displacement and lack of water and sanitation facilities, there is always a risk of diarrhoeal diseases, including cholera," said Roshan Khadivi of UNICEF, adding that water and sanitation diseases were major killers of children under five. On Friday UNICEF announced a "major immunisation campaign" for the city's children, after reports of measles among the young. Khadivi said the campaign against measles, diphtheria and tetanus would begin on Tuesday. But aid agencies fear that unless these refugees are properly and rapidly re-housed in government and UN camps outside the city, waterborne diseases could easily proliferate in the squatter settlements, where the stench of raw sewage hangs in the air.

Bo Viktor Nylund, UNICEF's senior child protection officer, said action was needed to move Port-au-Prince's homeless to more appropriate camps. "These temporary sites cannot go on for long," he said. "They are sleeping in the street, peeing in the street and ****ting in the street. Their parents are sad because they have lost children, friends or family members," said Pierre Biales, a Paris-based psychologist from the Red Cross, who is offering counselling and trying to teach basic hygiene to children in the camps. "Taking care of the children is now an emergency."

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American Baptists held in Haiti after trying to take children out of country

"...Some of the children mentioned that they have parents..."

Americans detained in Haiti were 'trying to rescue children'

January 31, 2010 -- Ten Americans will appear in court tomorrow in Port-au-Prince after attempting to take 34 children out of Haiti, saying that they were trying to rescue them. The Baptist aid workers, from the Idaho-based New Life Children's Refuge, were arrested on Friday as they attempted to leave the country for the Dominican Republic, about 45 miles from Port-au-Prince by road. They were reportedly taking the children, aged between three months and 12 years, to a safe house in the Dominican city of Cabarete.

Today the children were being cared for by the Austrian-based charity SOS Children's Villages. It said most of the children were in "a very bad emotional state … Some of the children mentioned that they have parents. According to a 12-year-old girl, she and her family had been told she was going to a boarding school in Dominican Republic." The charity said a piece of paper with information about New Life promised: "We have a beautiful place for them to live with a soccer field, swimming pool and short walk to the ocean. We have authorisation from the government to bring orphanages children, babies up to 10 years old in the DR. Haitian friends or relatives can come to DR and visit the children and get updates through our website." A spokeswoman for New Life, Laura Silsby, told Associated Press: "In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing." She said the group planned to take 100 children by bus to a 45-room hotel at Cabarete that was being converted into an orphanage.

The arrests came amid fears that child traffickers could be taking advantage of the mayhem in Port-au-Prince to snatch children from hospitals or refugee camps. Unaccompanied children are a common sight in the city's streets. Aid workers believe the quake may have created thousands of new orphans who are easy targets for criminal gangs. UNICEF's senior child protection adviser in Haiti, Bo Viktor Nylund, said: "We have heard reports that there has been trafficking through the border and flights leaving the country but we have not been able to verify this." He said some abduction reports could probably be explained as well-wishers trying to help, while others could be linked to exploitation for sexual purposes. "Probably more of the first," he said, but added: "Without parents it is a given that you are more vulnerable."

Meanwhile, the suspension of medical evacuation flights by the U.S. military has sparked fears that hundreds of lives could be lost because of inadequate treatment. The military suspended flights to the U.S. on Wednesday after a reported dispute over where victims should be treated. Florida's governor, Charlie Crist, said that the state's healthcare system was quickly reaching saturation. The U.S. ambassador in Haiti, Ken Merten, said yesterday that this was "obviously … something we are concerned about" but said he had not heard reports that Florida was refusing to receive Haitian earthquake victims.

Some aid workers in Port-au-Prince are turning their attention to the psychological effects on Haiti's young people. "They are afraid of what is going to happen," said Pierre Biales, a French doctor, who is setting up sports and cultural activities for displaced children. Trauma could "get more complicated" unless it was addressed quickly, he said. Port-au-Prince's remaining churches and markets filled with Haitians today as life slowly returned to routine. "Life is not normal, but life goes on," said David Francois, a 33-year-old resident of downtown Port-au-Prince where the stench of death has started to recede and tractors were demolishing fallen buildings.

[Al-khiyal]

9 américains détenus en Haïti

Lundi 1 Février 2010 -- La police haïtienne détenait hier neuf ressortissants américains soupçonnés d’avoir “volé” 33 enfants, ont indiqué les autorités de ce pays dévasté par le séisme du 12 janvier. La ministre haïtienne de la Culture, Marie Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, a annoncé que neuf américains, membres d’une association caritative chrétienne, étaient détenus à Port-au-Prince. Elle a fait état de 33 enfants “volés”, le plus âgé ayant 14 ans.

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U.S. military halts Haiti evacuation

U.S. to resume Haiti earthquake victim medical evacuations

February 1, 2010 -- The U.S. military is to resume medical evacuation flights for Haitian earthquake victims, ending a suspension that lasted several days, the White House said yesterday. The military had taken hundreds of critically injured Haitians to the U.S. on board its planes before halting the flights on Wednesday. Since then, at least a handful of patients were flown on civilian aircraft, and other flights continued to carry U.S. citizens and other mostly non-injured passengers.

The White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the medical airlift was set to resume early todayafter assurances were given that additional medical capacity for the patients existed in the U.S. and among its international partners. "We determined that we can resume these critical flights," Vietor said. "Patients are being identified for transfer, doctors are making sure that it is safe for them to fly, and we are preparing specific in-flight paediatric care aboard the aircraft where needed."

Exactly why the medical evacuations were suspended was unclear, though military officials had said some states refused to take patients. Officials in Florida, one of the main destinations for the flights, said no patients were turned away. However, the suspension began after the Florida governor, Charlie Crist, sent a letter on Tuesday to the health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, saying the state's hospitals were reaching saturation point. The letter asked for federal help to cover patient expenses. Crist said yesterday that the request could have been misinterpreted, but, he added, federal officials had indicated he would receive help covering the costs, totalling more than $7 million (£4.3 million). Crist told ABC News's Good Morning America that he was puzzled by the suspension.

Military planes carrying 700 U.S. citizens, legal residents and other foreign nationals have landed in central Florida over the past 24 hours, and three of those people required hospital treatment, state officials said. However, Florida had not received any patients needing urgent care since the halt, said Sterling Ivey, the governor's spokesman. "We're welcoming Haitians with open arms and probably done more than any other state and are happy to continue to do so," Crist said.

Colonel Rick Kaiser said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had been asked to build a 250-bed tent hospital in Haiti to relieve pressure on facilities where earthquake victims are being treated under tarpaulins. Several hospitals in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed in the 12 January earthquake. The U.S. ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, said about 435 earthquake victims had been evacuated before the suspension.