Medicine runs low at Haiti clinics

Doctors and aid workers are running dangerously low of supplies in Haiti’s capital and in the countryside, complicating efforts to treat 200,000 people in need of care following the earthquake.

The Best Way to House the Haitian Earthquake Refugees

…these containers are weather proof and watertight and they can be stacked because of their uniform dimensions…

Disease spreads in quake-hit Haiti

Haiti’s desperate earthquake survivors faced a new deadly threat Friday as the United Nations reported a rise in cases of diarrhea, measles and tetanus in squalid tent camps for victims.

Haiti’s ‘ghost’ tent villages

It’s midday in Port-au-Prince and the sun is beating down from a cloudless sky. It’s good news, another day without clouds means another day without rain.

Push to send FEMA trailers to Haiti stirs backlash

The trailer industry and lawmakers are pressing the government to send Haiti thousands of potentially formaldehyde-laced trailers left over from Hurricane Katrina — an idea denounced by some as a crass and self-serving attempt to dump inferior American products on the poor.

No place for politics

Something very odd went down with unicef yesterday. We were instructed in writing to pick up patients from the Comfort ship. When our driver got there to get the people there were unicef vehicles taking them to some camp. The unicef folks were not talking, they were just large and in charge. I’d love to believe somebody just got their wires crossed, but I’m not so sure. Something smelled wrong about it. The Comfort ship went to the work of getting us patient names, details, lists and a time to come get them. Clearly they were unaware of what was about to happen.

The problem is, giant worldwide organizations have power, and they have policies. Giant organizations are so giant that they cannot see the forest for the trees and they cannot see the individual person with the individual situation. We all know power corrupts. The unicef we’re seeing is not as interested in putting people/children first as it is in setting policy, precedent, and moving forward its own political agenda. I’ve watched people get up in arms and say that it is wrong to not support this long-standing and “worthy” organization. I recognize that will likely happen again here. We can easily agree to disagree if need be.

We’re simply stating that the policies and procedures are a long way off from meeting real people where they are. (And things are not what they appear to be. Not at all.) The anti-adoption rhetoric is maddening. Kids abandoned to an orphanage by their birth parent PRE earthquake are now being held in Haiti thanks to pressure placed on the Haitian government by the giant and powerful unicef. It is asinine and lacks all logic.

We are all for legal, careful, smart adoption. None of us want to see children taken from a birthparent that wants to raise them. That would be a terrible thing. The fact is, unicef is openly anti-international-adoption and what is happening now is nothing more than political grand-staning and a massive power trip. And all at the expense of children with waiting and approved families abroad.

For more thoughts and a specific story, read this.

Large powerful organizations with money can “encourage” and “convince” and put the pressure on … and a government in crisis will bend to the will of a single powerful organization.

Meanwhile, children and people in crisis are not being served, cared for, or respected.

Fear Not

I have not had trouble with nightmares at all in recent weeks. Until tonight. I’m not sure why but I have this odd fear hanging over me tonight. I keep dreaming that the patients that need help are standing by the side of the bed angry with us. They are all so bloody they look like they’ve left the set of a bad horror movie. They keep walking up to Troy’s side of the bed and waiting for us to notice them.

There is also a helicopter somewhere near by that has been hovering in the same spot for a long time. A C-130 just flew over. The mosquitoes in our bedroom are atrocious and won’t cut us a break tonight. It guess it is just a night to be awake at 3:45.

Last night we had a bunch of new guests arrive. Our house is at capacity. It was Minnesota reunion night for the most part. Randy Mortensen of World Wide Village got in with two people from KSTP in the Twin Cities. I kind of chuckled because Troy-boy has successfully avoided interviews for so long – but now the camera guy and reporter are sleeping in our family room. So much for that plan. They seem very nice. They will follow Randy to Leogane to watch the 50 bed mobile hospital go up later today. There are Docs and Nurses set to staff it for the next six months.

Thousands find relief in tent camp

In this austere Haitian aid operation, hope is a large sack of food that can feed a family of 5 for 2 weeks Haiti’s earthquake disaster has crossed boundaries of income and class, turning even the once-exclusive Petionville Club into a fetid tent camp.

Painful plight of Haiti’s ‘restavec’ children

Sende appeared terrified of man she said was her “godfather” Port-au-Prince, Haiti — For more than a week, Sende Sencil had gone without bathing, until two young American doctors at the hospital where she was being treated took the 9-year-old girl for a short walk outside to a shower to wash off the filth and grime.

Haiti recovery ‘to take decades’

The acting head of the UN mission in Haiti has said reconstruction will take several decades, following the devastating earthquake two weeks ago.