Haiti - One Year After the Earthquake- 1/12/11

Haiti

Delaware and Haiti are about the same size. Last year Haiti's population was estimated at approximately seven million. The country's demographic statistics reveal the effect of extreme poverty and an HIV/AIDS epidemic. These conditions have reduced life expectancy to 49.2 years, contributed to high infant mortality and general death rates, and slowed population growth.

Haiti's population is a young one, with 41 percent estimated to be between 0 and 14 years of age. Most Haitians are of African descent.

The National Cathedral - photo by David Albers

Today I heard that the people of Haiti gathered in a memorial tribute in Port au Prince, the city where so many died on that fateful afternoon one year ago. It seems that every family lost someone, a spouse, a sister, a child, a cousin or a friend in the earthquake. Haitians marched down empty, rubble-lined streets singing hymns and climbed broken buildings to hang wreaths of flowers. The nation held a minute of silence at 4:53 p.m., the moment when the earthquake ripped the ground on January 12, 2010. The government has stated its death toll estimate is more than 316,000.

Thousands gathered around the city to be with loved ones and pray. They flocked to the ruins of the once-towering national cathedral, to soccer stadium that served as an open-air morgue and later housed a tent camp, to parks, hillsides and the neighborhood centers.

Workers are still finding bodies in the rubble. Neighborhood-sized camps look like permanent shantytowns on the fields and plazas of the capital. A cholera epidemic that erupted outside the quake zone has killed more than 3,600 people, and an electoral crisis between President Rene Preval's ruling party and its rivals threatens to break an increasingly fragile political stability.

I have been wondering what it would be like to live in the earthquake portion of Haiti today. Tent camps were erected for people who lost their homes – they created little tent communities, some of them quite small, some of them very large, where an estimated one million people still live, unable to afford new homes.

If you live in a tent village with a million others what are your expenditures? No public utilities are available, no toilets, no telephones, no electricity, no running water. There is still the need for money for food and clothing.

Everyone has that desire for his or her own personal space. Many of us can seek refuge in our homes, in our bedroom. In the tent camps the living area is incredibly small, hot, constructed out of canvas and metal, and whatever else they could find. It is reported that less than 5 percent of the rubble has been cleared, only 15 percent of the temporary housing that is needed has been built and relatively few permanent water and sanitation facilities have been constructed.

The current cholera epidemic is mostly in the extreme rural areas, in the mountains and in a river valley where the outbreak began. It is heartbreaking to hear the stories of people who just weren't able to get to a treatment center in time.

This past week I watched a TV documentary about a private person from the US who took his personal 60-year-old plane and got the local people, who live on a mountaintop in Haiti, to create a landing strip for his aircraft so that he could bring medical personnel and supplies to help the people who have cholera. Many lives have been saved by the actions of this one man.

Cholera victims just need rehydration and antibiotics, and most people can be taken care of. But the problem is, so many people live out in rural areas far from treatment centers. Nearly 3,000 people have died of cholera and more than 100,000 were infected.

All of this is taking place against the backdrop of political turmoil. They had an election for president in the fall, but the results are still disputed months later. There were all kinds of allegations of fraud. There was violence in the aftermath of it that shut this city down a couple of days last month, in December.

Another problem that has surfaced is that on the day of the earthquake the local prison collapsed and hundreds of seasoned criminals escaped. There are reports that they are intimidating people and taking control of some areas. The police have been trying to round them up and have re-arrested about 700 who are being detained in a facility where there is no room for a man to lie down, so the inmates have to sleep standing up. They report that their legs are swollen and that there is a lot of fighting within the facility.

The United States and many other countries have helped to rally international support for Haiti’s recovery and reconstruction.

Over the past year, countless lives have been saved and many Haitians affected by the earthquake now have better access to food, water and health care than they did before the disaster. However, rubble continues to clog the streets, too many people are still living in tents, and for so many Haitians progress has not come fast enough. It has been said that helping the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere recover from one of the worst natural disasters ever to strike our hemisphere will take years, if not decades.

From the slums of Port-au-Prince to the rural Central Plateau, this impoverished country continues to need assist. Right now 90 percent of the quake devastation still remains. Many people, including orphanages still live in tents and families struggle to survive on less than two dollars a day.

The bottom line is that the people of Haiti and the volunteers are living in nightmare conditions. Poverty, illness, famine, lack of adequate water, homelessness and an unstable government. But there are consistent reports of the stamina and courage of the residents who live there. In spite of their current conditions the majority maintain a sense of dignity and hope.

What to do? What to do? I don’t have the answer to that except that we should make sure that we keep ourselves informed of the circumstances in Haiti. We can contact U.S. elected officials and the United Nations to let them know that the world is watching. We can continue to support relief efforts financially or by volunteering, and for those who believe that prayer can change things – PRAY for the people of this little country who have such strong spirits and hearts.

peacesojourner

Haiti Update............

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti

The United Nations said Saturday the government had confirmed 111,481 bodies; all told, authorities have estimated 200,000 dead from the magnitude-7.0 quake, according to Haitian government figures.

The streets of Haiti are covered in rubble. Trucks carry the dead bodies of victims to excavated mass graves outside the city. 40,000 bodies are said to have been buried and thousands more are still believed buried in the rubble and yet to be uncovered.

About 609,000 people are homeless in the capital's metro area, and the United Nations estimates that up to 1 million could leave Haiti's destroyed cities for rural areas already struggling with extreme poverty.

MEANWHILE.........

Christian televangelist and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Robertson stirred controversy by making insensitive remarks the day after a devastating earthquake hit Haiti on Jan. 12.

“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil,” Robertson said on “The 700 Club,” his daily broadcast on ABC Family.

Pat Robertson, is a household name to Americans. Even worse, he is influential and respected by millions. According to the book of Robertson, the reason for every disaster is sin, and the solution usually involves sending him money.

A lot of people have taken Pat Robertson to task for his cruel remarks concerning the earthquake in Haiti.

Here's an alternative view Pat, the "fault" lies under the Atlantic Ocean, not in the sins of Haitians. The earth's tectonic plates are neither good nor evil. The more we learn about their shifting, the better we will be able to predict future earthquakes.

This reckless insensitivity and baseless superstition should keep Robertson off mainstream television. His show should be boycotted and removed from ABC Family, and he should not be invited as a guest contributor on talk shows.

Haitians did not die because of some imagined pact. Despite this evidence, Robertson has offered his erroneous explanation to exploit this disaster and push religion.

Robertson’s fans should take all his comments — stupid or not — as a testament to his character and evaluate whether they want to be associated with him. In the realm of American broadcasting, Robertson is irrelevant. Balance is necessary in the national discourse, but there is no counterweight to his madness.

AND.............

The radioman Rush Limbaugh made harsh and racial comments about the affected people of Haiti earthquake. He went on-air to criticize American President Barack Obama for his quick response to the disastrous tragedy. According to insensitive Limbaugh the disaster enables Obama to show his compassionate credentials and for being too fast in approving aid for Haiti. He gives unwanted suggestions to people that they shouldn’t waste their money making donations to White House.

Limbaugh said, “We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

*****

It never ceases to amaze me there are always people that say really cruel, insensitive, insidious things. How can those who have enjoyed the success and financial rewards of these two men not feel some measure of sorrow for what has happened in Haiti? To use the power of their TV/radio pulpits to try to convince others not to help their brothers and sisters is sickening to me. How about you?

Please consider joining me and others in protesting and asking for their removal from the airwaves.

MEANWHILE..............

Thanks to all of the millions worldwide who have responded with compassion and kindness to the Haitian people. You restore our faith in human nature.

To those who do care the following may be of interest to you.

State Department Hotline For Info On Missing Relatives in Haiti: 1-888-407-4747

Make donations through The American Red Cross International Response Fund and the Presbyterian Disaster Relief fund.

I mention these two groups because I have personally worked with them both during disaster relief efforts and I believe them to be honest and ethically sound.

May God be with the people of Haiti during these disastrous times.

peacesojourner

Happy News - The Gift of Vision

Ophthalmologist Dr. Vivian K. Fasula, left, and opticians Arnold Edelman and Marsha Edelman, will be going to Nicaragua on Jan. 16 for two weeks to provide sight-saving services to the poor.

photo by Harry Scull Jr./Buffalo News

On a distant mission to give sight, eye doctors from Lockport, Western New York will take their services on the road to help needy in Nicaragua.

For the third consecutive year, Dr. Vivian K. Fasula will be in a remote part of Central America, using her skills to help impoverished patients whose vision problems, ranging from crossed eyes to blindness, wouldn’t be treated otherwise.

Dr. Fasula and two opticians, Marsha and Arnold Edelman, will leave Jan. 16 for San Carlos, Nicaragua, on a two-week mission organized by Medical Ministry International. The interdenominational Christian group puts together about 65 overseas medical, surgical, dental and eye missions each year, sending volunteer doctors and nurses to impoverished countries.

Their January schedule includes missions to the Dominican Republic, Malaysia, Jordan, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, the Philippines and Guatemala. Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Dr. Fasula who has been practicing in Lockport since 1984, will be in San Carlos for the second consecutive winter.

Last year, after landing in Managua, the capital, the doctors were taken by military helicopter to San Carlos, which has a regional population of about 9,000. The 180-mile journey would have taken 12 hours using the challenging roads.

For the local residents it is a 12-hour slog through the rain forest to get from San Carlos to the nearest ophthalmologist, in Managua.

Besides helping new patients she will visit last year’s patients to follow up on the cases of those she operated on to correct crossed eyes, those whose cataracts she removed and a boy whose sight she saved after a stick pierced his eye.

Being cross-eyed isn’t just a cosmetic problem; it can produce double vision and eventually blindness. “After a while, the brain just shuts that eye off,” Fasula said.

“There are a lot of cataracts. We ended up doing about 200 [last year],” Dr. Fasula said. The hospital in San Carlos had decent lighting and anesthetic equipment, but no microscope, a must for sensitive eye operations. So they brought one with them.

Five thousand pairs of used glasses, mostly gathered by Lions and Rotary clubs, were distributed to the locals, who lined up for hours before the eye clinic opened at 6 a. m.

Manufacturers donate all the medical supplies. Last year, armed Nicaraguan Army troops drove the materials to San Carlos.

“One lady had the densest cataract I’ve ever seen in my life,” Fasula said. “Some of these people were totally blind with the cataracts.”

One 14-year-old girl, Wendy, was blind because of her cross-eyed condition and because of childhood surgery for congenital cataracts that wasn’t followed up with proper treatment. Her parents walked in with her from a town four hours away from San Carlos.

Wendy’s eyes were repaired, and she was given glasses. “She can see for the first time in her life. It was like a miracle,” Fasula said. “This year when I come back, I’m going to have [lens] implants for her.”

“When I returned home and when I went to bed at night I was thinking of the patients. I started thinking - why was I so lucky to be born in this beautiful country that we live in? There but for the grace of God could have been one of my children.”

The volunteers must pay all their expenses. “It’s $975 per person; we don’t know what the airfare is,” Arnold Edelman said. Whatever the tickets cost, the doctors will have to pay. The total tab will probably be about $2,500 each.

excerpts of this article taken from tprohaska@buffnews.com

*****

When I lived in El Salvador I witnessed similar teams of physicians who would come annually to treat local residents. I can also testify that those glasses that you may have contributed to the Lions club really do get used. One of the things that I did there was to distribute the previously used glasses to those losing their sight. The people were so happy to receive them.

I also would often ask myself 'how did I get so lucky to be born in a country (England) with top medical care available to every person there?'

Many thanks to these volunteers for stepping up to help others.