February 10, 2010

Three Updates: Reflections and Reports

We continue to receive reports from friends and acquaintances and partners who are still in the field in Haiti. We want to share three of those stories today.
The work in Haiti continues, and there are still so many suffering. It is difficult to see if help is actually getting through at times with so much devastation and need. If you've followed my blog and twitter feed, you read some of the amazing things that have happened down there during this short time. There are hundreds of stories like these, but I wanted to share one with you now and thank the efforts of so many to make at least one success story.

I traveled to Haiti with Samaritan's Purse, an international relief organization, who had their first physician on the ground on January 13. Their work was tremendous and immediate. While I was there, they had built up to a 55-person Disaster Assistance Relief Team (DART), of which 21 were medical professionals. That number has only continued to grow since.
**Hope Through Healing Hands donated $5,000 to Big Kenny's Love Everybody, LLC to support the medical and trauma services he and his team provided in Haiti.

by Cindy Watts

The Tennessean Blog

Country singer "Big Kenny" Alphin was in the Charlotte, N.C., airport flying home to Nashville from a gig when he saw the news - a 7.0 magnitude earthquake had struck Haiti. Capital city Port au Prince was in shambles. More than 100,000 people were presumed dead.

Alphin immediately called Jeanne Ratterman. Her husband, Alphin's friend Walt Ratterman, had been in Port au Prince since Jan. 2.

The news - no news.

January 25, 2010

Invisible Lives, a documentary scheduled to air worldwide January 26 at 20:30 GMT on BBC World, will be featuring the work of Save the Children.  In the documentary, Dr. Joy Lawn, a newborn health expert with Save the Children, travels to Nepal and Malawi to examine how these two countries, although worlds apart, are making progress in saving newborn lives. The documentary explores how these low-income countries are among the few on track to meet the United Nation's Millennium Development Goal of reducing deaths of children under 5 years of age by 2/3 by 2015 despite a myriad of obstacles.

Those who have satellite television or special cable may have access to the program on the BBC World Channel.  If you don't, there will be a free download to the video of the program on and after 26th January at www.rockhopper.tv

 

Just after our arrival at the Port au Prince airport, I met a volunteer medical team on the tarmac. They had supplies, but they were stranded at the airport with nowhere to go. They were awaiting UN directions and approval to leave.

We had just gotten off our plane and they saw my Samaritan's Purse hat and asked for help. We only had one truck so I told them I'd just received an email from King's hospital and that they were in dire need of help.

I said I would postpone our departure from the airport to have our truck take them immediately to King's hospital if they were willing. They were dropped off...

January 21, 2010

This is the latest update sent by USAID-DCHA to be released to the public.

KEY DEVELOPMENTS

At 0603 hours local time, a magnitude 5.9 aftershock occurred 35 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, with the epicenter located near Petit Goâve town, Ouest Department, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), an estimated 94,000 people experienced very strong shaking during the aftershock; however, the extent of the damages and injures currently remain unclear. According to the USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team (USAID/DART), U.S. urban search and rescue (USAR) teams are deploying to aftershock-affected areas, including Petit Goâve and Léogâne towns, to assess potential damages.

Following the aftershock, U.S. USAR teams began resurveying buildings to identify potential new open spaces created by the aftershock where survivors may be trapped and monitor building shifts.

On January 20, USAID's Office of Food for Peace (USAID/FFP) contributed an additional $20 million to the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) Emergency Operation for Haiti, increasing USAID/FFP's overall contribution to $68 million to date. At present, expedited commodity purchases are being organized.

1.20.10 USAID-DCHA Haiti-Earthquake Fact Sheet #8

A Fundraiser to Benefit Hope Through Healing Hands

THIS SATURDAY, JANUARY 23rd

@ George

3251 Prospect St. NW Courtyard Washington, DC

9:00pm Minimum $25 donation / cover

**All proceeds will go directly to helping organizations on the ground in Haiti**
The Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health is hosting the second annual Tennessee Global Health Forum on February 12, 2010.

The Forum is being held at the Vanderbilt Student Life Center in Nashville, Tennessee and is bringing together individuals and organizations that are involved or hope to be involved in global health and development. The forum will address how sustainability fits into the arena of global health, offer lessons from leaders in international orgnazations based in Tennessee, help identify the existing and potential approaches to buliding sustainable programs in the Tennessee local area expanding to the global setting, and to explore and open up new doors to the successful methods that lead to sustaining global health programs.

January 20, 2010

As of today, we have donated the funds raised from the Haiti Disaster Relief Fund to three different beneficiaries: Baptist Haiti Mission, Samaritan's Purse, and Save the Children totaling $35,000.

For more about these organizations, see our Beneficiaries page.

Thank you for your generous support.

Subscribe to our newsletter to recieve the latest updates.