From Doctors Without Borders:
Cholera in Haiti: “All of the hospitals in Port-au-Prince are overflowing with patients”
Stefano Zannini is the Head of Mission for MSF in Haiti. Here he gives a first-person account of the situation on the ground for MSF teams responding to the spread of the outbreak in Port-au-Prince.
It’s a really worrying situation for us at the moment. All of the hospitals in Port-au-Prince are overflowing with patients and we’re seeing seven times the total amount of cases we had three days ago.
In the slum of Cite Soleil, located in the north of the city, yesterday we recorded 216 separate cases of cholera arriving at the hospital, while the total number recorded just 5 days ago was 30. Patients are coming from everywhere, throughout the city, slums and wealthier areas. At the moment we have 400 beds set aside for the stabilization and rehabilitation of patients and we’re hoping to get that up to 1,000 by the end of the week.
But we are really worried about space. If the number of cases continues to increase at the same rate, then we’re going to have to adopt some drastic measures to be able to treat people. We’re going to have to use public spaces and even streets. I can easily see this situation deteriorating to the point where patients are lying in the street, waiting for treatment. At the moment, we just don’t have that many options.
Read the entire article.
November 12, 2010
by Ansel Herz, IPS News
PORT-AU-PRINCE, May 25, 2010 (IPS) – United Nations peacekeeping troops responded to a rock-throwing demonstration by university students Monday evening with a barrage of tear gas and rubber bullets in the area around Haiti’s National Palace, sending masses of displaced Haitians running out of tent camps into the streets, according to witnesses.
"That child was gravely injured in the face! It was miserable, they were throwing gas everywhere," said Junior Joel, a young man hanging with friends at night outside the palace – still partially collapsed from the January earthquake.
Three volunteer doctors from the NGO Partners in Health who were working in the emergency room of the General Hospital said they treated at least six individuals with wounds from rubber bullets.
"They were bleeding," Sarah McMillan, a doctor from New Hampshire, told IPS. "There was a little girl with a big laceration on her face. It needed about 10 stitches. She’ll probably have a scar."
The girl was discharged from the hospital and could not be found in the tent camp as of publication time.
Thousands of families are crowded into the public squares in the Champs du Mars zone around the palace, after the earthquake killed at least 200,000 people and drove nearly two million from destroyed neighbourhoods.
A coalition of political organisations called Tet Kole, Haitian Creole for "Heads Together", has staged protests in the area for the past month, demanding the resignation of President René Préval over his handling of the post-earthquake crisis.
The walls of the Faculty of Ethnology school are dotted with graffiti denouncing Préval and the United Nations. Students said they gave Brazilian peacekeeping troops stationed in jeeps outside the campus the middle finger sign late Monday afternoon.
When the troops tried to enter the campus, angrily calling students thieves and vagabonds, the students showered them with rocks. As the soldiers fled, they fired three bullet rounds in the air and one of them struck the front-facing wall of the school, students said.
When the troops returned in bigger vehicles, Frantz Mathieu Junior said he ran to hide in a bathroom, but the soldiers kicked the thin wooden door open. Junior said he was forced to the ground and kicked repeatedly, then taken away. He says he was force-fed while in detention.
The students showed IPS on Tuesday the cracks in the wooden door and the bullet hole next to a second-storey window. After Junior was taken on Monday, they took to the streets in an angry protest, throwing more rocks.
Edmond Mulet, the head of the peacekeeping mission – known by the acronym MINUSTAH – issued a statement blaming an unnamed student for "the provocation" of throwing stones at a patrol, but apologising for the troops’ intrusion on university grounds to seize him.
U.N. troops never fired any bullets or tear gas on Monday, said MINUSTAH spokesperson David Wimhurst. He said only pepper spray and rubber bullets were used to quell an out-of-control protest.
CNN crews heard gunshots, smelled tear gas and saw gas canisters littering the area surrounding the palace. According to witnesses from the surrounding tent camps, U.N. troops blanketed the area with tear gas and fired rubber bullets at 6 p.m. on Monday.
"Everyone ran because nobody wants to be around when there’s so much gas," Joseph Marie-ange, a 24-year-old mother of four, told IPS. "They’re abusive. They shot the gas in here and the children and elders were falling, everyone was feeling the effects."
Hours after the protests and swirling gas dissipated, Levita Mondesir trudged with her three-month-old baby towards the General Hospital’s exit.
"We live in Place Petion, across from the Ethnology school," she told IPS. "The students came, then MINUSTAH released the gas. When I got back to the camp, everyone was running, so I ran too."
"I tried to cover my child and told the other children to lay down under the bed," she continued. "There was smoke and the kids and people were falling. My baby wasn’t responding, I was worried he died. I was crying and others helped me take him to the hospital."
She caught a motorcycle taxi to the hospital and received a reserve ticket for her baby to be x-rayed the next day. Tines Clerge, her husband, said he can’t continue living there now. "I can’t stay at Chanmas anymore," he told IPS.
The opposition protests continued Tuesday afternoon in Chanmas. Scores of U.N. troops and Haitian police ringed the national palace with barricades. The demonstrators accuse President Préval of seeking to grab power by extending his mandate past the original end date. Parliament approved the extension.
Some are also upset with the Haiti Interim Recovery Commission, which directs the spending of nearly 10 billion dollars in aid money. A majority of the commission members are foreigners, though Préval has a final veto on all decisions.
"If they want to suppress the protest, why didn’t they shoot the gas at the school where the students are?" asked Malia Villa, an organiser with the Haitian women’s group KONFAVIV, who fled the Chanmas area Monday night. "How can they shoot it in the middle of the camp, where we have children and families? They say they’re here for security in the country, but how can the government work with them now when they do this?"
"We can’t continue to tolerate this anymore. It’s revolting to us," she told IPS, throwing up her hands.
U.N. troops have been dogged by persistent accusations of abuse since their mission was established in 2004 after the ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Incidents occurred in 2008 and 2009 in which Haitian witnesses said troops recklessly fired their weapons, killing or injuring civilians, while MINUSTAH internal investigations cleared their troops of wrongdoing.
Further political demonstrations are scheduled for Thursday, according to opposition groups.
(END)
Original article: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51581
May 26, 2010
NOW: Fight in Haiti, Rich Against Poor
A friend with the Haiti Response Coalition is sending out an alert about a serious situation going on Monday night in the damaged land:
“The urgent concern is with the Saint Louis de Gonzague school, the most elite school in Port-au-Prince whose alumni include Baby Doc himself, Andre Apaid, and Guy Philippe. Currently there is a camp of 11,000 people situated on the school’s land in Delmas. The school leadership has a plan to force all of these people off the school land, over the coming DAY. (It seems symbolic that they have announced this on Easter Sunday). The people have been offered a plot of land that will hold 500 (5% of their number) in a different location. No regard has been given to the fact that the majority of the 11,000 will end up in the street. Neither has there been recognition of the voluntary schools created and run by the community and the children currently attending them (the plans include their destruction). For over a month, this community has survived with no food distributions. Their opinions, wants, and needs have not been taken into account. At the cost of these people and their initiative, the most elite school in Haiti is being rebuilt. With the resources allocated for this school (that educates a few hundred people per year), the thousands of ’squatting’ residents could be given food, water, proper shelter; and their self-initiated educational efforts could be supported.
“Backstory: A key player has been a priest who is headmaster of the school. He had been organizing food distributions until the end of February, when he approached the police and the mayor to request the camp’s removal. The Delmas Police commissioner, Carl Henry, showed up to the camp soon after that and told people they had one week to vacate. Camp representatives went to the mayor’s office to give their perspectives; he did not take a meeting with them, and they were dispersed with police. They waited for the day of removal, it passed, things cooled off; but all distributions stopped that week and have been off throughout March. Yesterday, the priest let the camp know Minustah would remove them if they were not out by tomorrow. Tonight, Haiti Response Coalition members were at the site, and say Minustah is there and will initiate evacuations tomorrow. The HRC has reached out to UN cluster leads, including the head of the IOM, and other officials, with no real results.
“We are working to spread the word, the issue is urgent.”
Original post here. Join the facebook group.
April 8, 2010
In 2009, we celebrated the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States, eager for a change in the toxic political climate created by eight years of the Bush-Cheney regime.
However, the war drags on in Iraq, it escalates in Afghanistan, drones bomb Pakistan; billions are doled out for Wall Street; health care reform goes nowhere; no progress on closing Guantanamo; Colombia is now a virtual U.S. military base; coups and death squads return to Honduras.
Shockingly, the political climate remains much the same. What is changing is the earth’s environment and in December, efforts to secure a binding climate change treaty were tragically undermined.
The year’s events underscore the truth that the change we so desperately need will not come from new presidents. Climate change – political and environmental – requires changing the system and that comes from the bottom up. The Quixote Center is working with communities throughout the Americas to create this deep, systemic change.
From support for reforestation and agro-ecology efforts in Haiti and Nicaragua, to accompanying human rights defenders and social movement leaders under fire in Honduras, getting books to inmates in U.S. prisons and standing in solidarity with U.S. women religious as they face investigation by the Vatican, the Quixote Center is bottom rooted in systemic change.
Together with partners in the Hemispheric Social Alliance, we are building networks of solidarity to sustain struggles and protect communities from the deadly linkage of free trade, environmental destruction and militarization. Throughout the hemisphere, social movements are advancing new paradigms that foster economic and environmental justice in the Americas.
We are inspired by the courageous people of Honduras whose non-violent resistance to a SOA- led military takeover and state terror is changing the political climate.
In response to the failure of the world Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Bolivia is leading the way. Calling for a bottom up conference rooted in the worlds social movements, Bolivia will host a process to build and reach international consensus on climate change in April of 2010.
We are profoundly moved by the tragedy in Haiti. The magnitude of the catastrophe underscores the need for systemic change. We are committed to walk with the people of Haiti as they struggle to recover and rebuild their shattered lives and land.
We are grateful to each and every one of you, who helps us to push from the bottom up.
March 26, 2010
