Haiti earthquake - relief efforts

US to resume airlifting quake victims

Article published on the 2010-02-01 Latest update 2010-02-01 16:01 TU

A survivor of the Haiti earthquake receives medical treatment aboard a flight from the Dominican Republic to the US.
Photo: Reuters

The United States was due to resume airlifts of injured Haitian earthquake victims on Monday following a dispute over who would pay for the evacuations.

Flights carrying people with serious injuries and burns had been suspended last Wednesday, when Florida Governor Charlie Crist asked the federal government to contribute to the cost.

But the US agreed to resume the evacuations once they confirmed that other medical centres both inside and outside the country would be available to treat victims.

Meanwhile, members of a US Christian charity who were detained after attempting to leave the country with a busload of children have defended their actions.

Ten members of the Idaho-based New Life Children’s Refuge had been trying to cross the border into the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

"We came here literally to just help the children," Laura Silsby said, "Our intentions were good. We wanted to help those who lost parents in the quake or were abandoned."

However, Patricia Vargas, the director of the centre where the children were being cared for, said most of them insisted they still had family in Haiti.

Children’s agency Unicef had recently warned about the dangers of child trafficking. David Bull, executive director of Unicef UK, told RFI that the agency is working with 29 other organisations in Haiti to register children and reunite them with their families.

“Obviously if any child is taken out of the country that process is disrupted and we wouldn’t be able to reunify those children with surviving family members,” he says.

“Almost all children will have someone from their family. Even if they don’t have parents, they’re likely to have uncles or aunts, or cousins or brothers and sisters.”

Bull said reputable organisations would know to follow international procedures and that Unicef had been working to prevent illegal trafficking.

“What we were doing before the earthquake was working with the Haitian government, in recognition of the trafficking problem, to try to establish procedures which could prevent people taking children across the borders.

“We helped the government to establish specially-trained units of child-protection police. Those units have been reconstituted following the earthquake and are positioned at the borders and at the airport, and appear to be doing their job successfully.”

On Sunday, the World Food Programme launched a massive food distribution effort in Haiti.

The UN agency said it was opening 16 food distribution centres in the capital Port-au-Prince, with the aim of feeding two million people in two weeks.

The sites are reserved for women in a bid to reduce the ugly squabbling that occurred at other distribution locations.

Natasha Scripture, spokesperson for the World Food Programme, told RFI said it is “perhaps the most complex operation” they had ever launched.

“Each beneficiary will be taking home about 25kg – just about 50lb – of rice,” she says. “For one family, which is about five or six people, that should last about two weeks.”

More than one million survivors are still homeless, three weeks after the earthquake that killed about 170,000 people.