Haiti is devastated and a 100,000 or more people are feared dead as a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit the island at around 5 p.m Tuesday with an epicenter 10 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.
The earthquake’s power matched that of several nuclear bombs, said Roger Searle, a professor of geophysics in the Earth Sciences Department at Durham University in England. He said the combination of its magnitude and geographical shallowness made it particularly dangerous. (1)
The international community including France, The United States, and The United Nations have come out in full support and declaration for immediate humanitarian relief for Haiti.
The first lady of Haiti has said that most of Port-au-Prince is destroyed.
And with the earthquake hitting many hospitals, many health care workers are feared dead, and thus may impede health aid to the victims of this catastrophe.
HAITI
Haiti is a Caribbean country. Along with the Dominican Republic, it occupies the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago. The total area of Haiti is 27,750 square kilometres (10,714 sq mi) and its capital is Port-au-Prince.
Haiti’s regional, historical, and ethnolinguistic position is unique for several reasons. It was the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial independent Black-led nation in the world, and the only nation whose independence was gained as part of a successful slave rebellion. Despite having common cultural links with its Hispano-Caribbean neighbors, Haiti is the only predominantly Francophone independent nation in the Americas, and one of only two (along with Canada) which designate French as an official language. (2)
HAITIAN CITIZENS FACE HEALTH RISKS
Due to the massive nature of this earthquake, many basic services have ceased altogether, which include the total devastation and collapse of many hospitals and clinics. Potential dangers include unsafe drinking water, or lack of viable and safe water for drinking, and the inhalation of potentially dangerous dust that could contribute to respiratory diseases.
Experts say the dead bodies don’t typically pose a public health problem in the immediate aftermath. Rather, the big threats right now include respiratory disease from inhaling the dust of collapsed buildings and diarrhea from drinking contaminated water.
And Haiti’s existing health problems could worsen. Medical experts say disasters generally do not lead to new outbreaks of infectious diseases, but refugees likely face greater risk of Dengue fever, malaria and measles. (3)
INTERNATIONAL AID
As soon as news broke out on Tuesday on the devastating earthquake in Haiti, many nations, including international aid groups, were already moving towards aid and helping the nation with humanitarian relief. Nations such as The United States, France, U.K., Brazil, Spain, and other European Nations expressed their willingness to provide a great effort to help the citiziens of Haiti.
Governments, international relief organizations and other aid groups mobilized Wednesday to deliver food, medicine, generators and other supplies to Haiti, amid massive destruction wrought by the powerful earthquake that slowed their efforts.
The U.S. government prepared to send ships and emergency assistance, while France, the U.K., Brazil and other countries also said they would send aid. As they scrambled to assess the scope of the devastation and figure out how to overcome logistics problems to deliver aid quickly, relief workers on the ground reported being overwhelmed. Thousands of people were believed dead, while workers raced to try to free an unknown number of people trapped under mounds of rubble.
A dozen individual European Union countries sent money and aid teams on Wednesday, while the European Commission, the EU’s executive office based in Brussels, offered cash, and promised to do more after conducting an evaluation of the situation on the ground. (4)
sources:
(1) CNN Coverage on Haiti Earthquake
(2) Wikipedia
(3) Associated Press
Popularity: 1% [?]
Recent Comments