March 01, 2010
One month after the earthquake, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) had the following to say:
“It’s hard to believe that four weeks after the quake, so many people still live under bed sheets in camps and on the street,” said Christophe Fournier, MSF’s International President who recently returned from Haiti. “Where it can, MSF has been distributing tents as well as hygiene kits and cooking supplies, but it is mainly concentrating on providing medical care. “One can only wonder how there could be such a huge gap between the promise of a massive financial influx into the country and the slow pace of distribution. MSF is concerned that with the onset of the rainy season, we’ll be facing new medical emergencies, when people who are living without shelter, come to us with diarrhoea or respiratory infections.”
Two weeks after this statement hundreds of thousands of Haitians remain without shelter. According to the February 25 OCHA update:
To date, over 131,000 tarpaulins have been distributed along with 23,000 family size tents, which means a 33 per cent coverage of the current shelter needs.
This would mean that roughly 870,000 people of the estimated 1.3 million in need are still without shelter.
