This quote from Paul Farmer about the situation in Gonaïves really touched me:
"After 25 years spent working in Haiti, and having grown up in Florida, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as painful as what I just witnessed in Gonaïves," reported the public health activist Paul Farmer, "except in that very same city, four years ago."
Decided to search for more information about Farmer. Found blog of Wadner Pierre, a Haitian Photojournalist from Gonaïves currently studying in the U.S. The title of this post is from him:
People everywhere in the globe, listen the voice of people in Gonaives and in the rest of Haiti. It is hard and it's really hard a sit can be for people. As a Haitian and a Gonaivian man I am very concern, I ask you my brothers and sisters in the world to help my relatives there in the way you can.
Wadner Pierre also mentions Farmer, calling him "Dr. Polo", linking to a letter:
Dr. Paul Farmer, the co-founder "Zami Lasante (ZL) in Creole"(Partners In Health in English) has been spending time with to get to know the reality of Haitian people live everyday. He gets it, and becomes one of the foreign witnesses and spokesmen in the world of them by writing books, articles and presenting speeches. I invite to read this letter on, and you'll get it because "Dr. Polo as well-known among the Haitian peasants" says Dr. Paul visited Gonaives after the devastated tropical storm Hanna, he will tell you what he saw there.
It's a link to Partners in Health — "Zanmi Lasante" in Haitian Kreyol, PIH's flagship project. Their vision is to do whatever it takes to providing medical care and social services. Just as we would do if a member of our own family—or we ourselves—were ill. Paul Farmer is one of PIH's co-founders, and on September 6th he wrote this report from Gonaïves:
The need is of course enormous. After 25 years spent working in Haiti and having grown up in Florida, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as painful as what I just witnessed in Gonaïves—except in that very same city, four years ago. Again, you know that 2004 was an especially brutal year, and those who work with PIH know why: the coup in Haiti and what would become Hurricane Jeanne. Everyone knows that Katrina killed 1500 in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast, but very few outside of our circles know that what was then Tropical Storm Jeanne, which did not even make landfall in Haiti, killed an estimated 2000 in Gonaïves alone. Logging on this morning from Mirebalais, I see that Ophelia has circulated the essay [PDF:From Gonaïves to New Orleans] I wrote about what are, essentially, unnatural disasters.
Farmer goes on to say PIH is not a disaster-relief organization, but an organization dedicated to bringing the "fruits of modernity" to "people marginalized by adverse social forces". He writes more about the situation, and that a friend is reminded of the long lines of people during the Rwanda genocide in 1994. I don't know what can be said about this part.....
The people of that city and others have been stranded without food or water or shelter for three days and it’s simply not true that they cannot be reached. When I called to say as much to friends working with the U.S. government and with disaster-relief organizations based in Port-au-Prince, it became clear that, as of yesterday, there’s not a lot of accurate information leaving Gonaïves, although estimates of hundreds of deaths are not hyperbolic. We had no cell phone coverage there and had to wait until last night to call people in Port-au-Prince. One sympathetic American friend, following up on our distress calls about a lack of relief, told me this morning the retort she’d heard from an expert employed by a U.N.-affiliated health organization: "Three days without water is nothing. People in southern Haiti affected by Gustave went ten days without water."
No human can go ten days without water.
I've read about conflicting reports on the actual number of dead. The big issue now is water-borne illnesses. Dead livestock (and maybe bodies) float in the water.
(AP) In Gonaives, Police Commissioner Ernst Dorfeuille said his poorly equipped force — 15 officers for the city of 160,000 — has buried dozens of badly decomposed and unidentifiable corpses in graves outside the city. "After three days, those bodies could not stay," said Dorfeuille, adding he witnessed the burial of five people. It wasn't clear how these bodies fit with previous tallies of the dead, but Dorfeuille denied reports citing him as giving a death toll of nearly 500 in Gonaives. On one city street, a man used a rope to drag a bloated body through the floodwaters.
The stench is horrible. PIH personnel are in the city doing the best they can with the little they have.
We will withdraw from Gonaïves (as soon as we get the information we need regarding urgent supplies and as soon as we see more evidence of the mainstream disaster-relief organizations) to Saint-Marc and Petite Rivière de l’Artibonite, where we will run the hospitals and health centers with our colleagues in the Ministry of Health; we will help organized food and some clothing for people in Gonaïves and refugees being brought in today from Gonaïves.
Some of us on dKos were wondering about the Mirebalais bridge collapse. Farmer has a photo showing the bridge washed away by floodwaters. The U.S. Coast Guard cutter mentioned did arrive: USS Kearsarge Arrives in Haiti to Support USAID. PIH will remain "nimble" to the situation. List of needed items: tetanus vaccine, first-aid supplies, oral-rehydration packs, and of course food, cooking oil, and fuel. I've read several reports on "crowd control"; an already dehumanizing crisis surrounded by guns.
Again, I know that conventional disaster-relief organizations have greater experience in logistics, and am expecting they’ll have kits prepared for precisely these needs, but as of today these supplies are conspicuous by their absence. Problems with "crowd control," refugees, and short tempers will only increase as the days go by—especially if more rain falls, as is predicted, tomorrow and Monday.
Over 20 years ago, someone explained to me that "wet poverty is worse than dry poverty." I wasn’t then sure what that meant, but had a pretty good idea of the misery endured by those living through the rainy season in houses that, as the Haitians say, "can fool the sun but not the rain." I’ve repeated the maxim often enough to merit teasing from my students, but the Haitians find it neither amusing nor over-used. Trying to sleep in wet clothes, on a muddy floor, is high on the list of degradingly uncomfortable activities. It’s better to simply give up and wait until daylight.
I never heard of Partners In Health before. But I did check out their website and was impressed by their commitment and dedication.
Donate • PIH model of care • Recommended Reading: Haiti • View 60 Minutes Segment
DailyKos: Your Help Is Needed To Save Lives In Haiti (Avila has links to resources & other info) • Haiti (links to other diaries related to this crisis)