A crushed vehicle shows the destructive power of the earthquake. Photo: Sarah Dellor/Tearfund
4 February 2010
Thousands of people who have not received any aid in Haiti’s earthquake shattered capital are due to receive help from Tearfund partners.
Food, cooking, medical and hygiene kits are to be distributed to 1,500 of the most vulnerable families in the Port-au-Prince districts of Delmas and Carrefour Feuilles by World Concern Haiti.
Children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and the elderly are being targeted by Tearfund’s partner which is also offering counselling and emotional support.
World Concern staff will be working with local churches, local authorities, community associations, youth and women’s groups to deliver aid to the most marginalised survivors.
Fellow Tearfund partner, the Federation of Protestant Schools of Haiti (FEPH), is launching a project called SOS Haiti to help 3,000 people, including 1,800 children.
A city centre street in Port-au-Prince. Photo: Sarah Dellor/Tearfund
Enormous
As well as the capital, FEPH will be working in the coastal cities of Jacmel and Miragoane providing food such as rice, peas, maize, spaghetti, oil and salt along with stoves, matches, plates and cutlery.
Soap, towels, toothpaste, toothbrushes and small bowls will be distributed in hygiene kits too, as these outlying areas have suffered shortages due to the damage to roads and the supply network.
Jennie Evans, Tearfund’s head of the Latin America and Caribbean region, said, ‘The scale of the damage is enormous near the earthquake’s epicentre, outside Port-au-Prince. Towns such as Leogane, Carrefour, Gressier and Jacmel have seen damage on a scale similar if not worse than the capital and there’s little help for the people.’
The earthquake, which measured seven on the Richter scale, killed an estimated 120,000 Haitians, has affected 3 million others and left one million homeless across the impoverished Caribbean nation.
Trucks
Supported by generous giving to our emergency appeal, other Tearfund partners are also providing aid.
World Relief has delivered 20 truck loads of water to people in camps in Port-au-Prince.
An orphanage with 60 children and the community around it has also benefited from World Relief drilling new boreholes.
Pastor Pierre Alexis, head of the orphanage, said, ‘This will make a very big difference. Water is indispensable to our balance of life.’
MAP International is also partnering with Tearfund to provide badly needed medicines for the injured, while Medical Teams International is working with us and World Relief on treatment and post-operative care.
A plea for help after the quake. Photo: Sarah Dellor/Tearfund