Global General
Haiti to relocate 400,000 quake homeless
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-01-22 11:59
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 US military medical personnel try to set the broken leg of a Haitian at a clinic at the Killick Haitian Coast Guard Base January 19, 2010. [Agencies] |
Food was reaching tens of thousands, but the need was much greater. Perhaps no one was more desperate than the 80 or so residents of the damaged Municipal Nursing Home, in a slum near the shell of Port-au-Prince's devastated cathedral. The quake killed six of the elderly, three others have since died of hunger and exhaustion, and several more were barely clinging to life.
"Nobody cares," said Phileas Justin, 78. "Maybe they do just want us to starve to death."
In the first eight days after the quake, they had eaten just a bit of pasta cooked in gutter water and a bowl of rice each. On Thursday, they had a small bowl of spaghetti and five bags of rice and beans, and cooking oil, were delivered.
A dirty red sheet covered the body of Jean-Marc Luis, who died late Wednesday. "He died of hunger," said security guard Nixon Plantin. On Thursday, four days after The Associated Press first reported on the patients' plight, workers from the British-based HelpAge International visited and said they would help.
One by one, such deaths were adding to a Haitian government-estimated toll of 200,000 dead, as reported by the European Commission. It said 250,000 people were injured and 2 million homeless in the nation of 9 million.
As US troops began patrolling Port-au-Prince to boost security, sporadic looting and violence continued.
At a building in the Carrefour neighborhood where the multi-faith Eagle Wings Foundation of West Palm Beach, Florida, was to distribute food, quake victims from a nearby tent camp suddenly stormed the stores and made off with what the charity's Rev. Robert Nelson said were 50 tons of rice, oil, dried beans and salt. Fights broke out as others stole food from the looters.
At least 124 people were saved by search-and-rescue teams since the quake, the European Commission reported. As hopes faded, some of the 1,700 specialists, working in four dozen teams with 160 dogs, began demobilizing.
Joe Downey, a fire battalion chief from an 80-member New York City police and firefighter unit, said this was the worst destruction his rescue team had ever seen.
"Katrina was bad," he said of the 2005 hurricane. "But this was a magnitude at least 100 times worse."
On Thursday, 18 hospitals and emergency field hospitals were working in Port-au-Prince, but the burden was overwhelming.
Doctors said patients were dying of sepsis from untreated wounds and they warned of potential outbreaks of diarrhea, respiratory-tract infections and other communicable diseases in the camps. A team of epidemiologists was on its way to assess that situation, the Pan American Health Organization said.
Offshore, the US Navy hospital ship Comfort was reinforcing its crew to 800 doctors, nurses and medical technicians, increasing its hospital beds to almost 1,000, and boosting its operating rooms from six to 11 in the next few days, the Navy said.
Almost $1 billion in foreign aid has been pledged to help Haiti recover from the quake, and the White House said the US share has climbed to about $170 million.
The UN World Food Program said it has delivered at least 1 million rations to about 200,000 people, with each ration providing the equivalent of a daily three meals. In the coming days, it plans to deliver five-day rations to 100,000 people a day, it said. The US military said it was resuming air drops of water and meals into zones secured by US troops.
More than 2,600 US soldiers, Marines and airmen were on the ground, and more than 10,000 sailors and others were offshore. The UN was adding 2,000 peacekeepers to the 7,000 already in Haiti, and 1,500 more police to the 2,100-member international force.
