AMERICA/HAITI - “Aid is still not reaching Haiti,” says Jesuit Relief Services

Leon (Agenzia Fides) - “Nine months after the earthquake, two million Haitians are living in refugee camps, only 15% of the school-age population receives some type of education and there are still corpses still under the rubble.” These are the words of Sonia Adames, Director of the Jesuit Service for Refugees and Migrants in the Dominican Republic of Entreculturas, presenting the crude reality in an interview with a Spanish newspaper, to raise awareness about the real situation in Haiti.
The note sent to Fides explains that Haiti has ceased to be a "protagonist" in the media, but the earthquake is still there. "A tragedy like that earthquake had an impact around the world. So many deaths in just an instant attracts everyone's attention," says Sonia Adames, "but the media has not explained how more people are dying slowly because of their living conditions."
Life needs nine months of gestation, the time to give birth to a new project. "Nine months after the earthquake, the time necessary before giving birth, there should have already been a movement of reconstruction. Life in the camps is deteriorating, the hurricane season has begun, and the unsanitary conditions in all the refugee camps, which 'house' up to 6,000 people, will increase...The media does not see what's inside the tents. That is what is becoming more and more horrible in all its dimensions: lack of hygiene, hunger, and the injured who have had limbs amputated or have even been operated on the skull and the hips. With an impressive heat of 97 degrees Fahrenheit. In Haiti, there are only two seasons, summer and 'hell,' and now we're in 'hell,' with a humid heat that is really just hellish, with a sun that beats down on a deforested country."
The owners of the land where the tents were set up at the time the emergency are now starting to reclaim their property, and "we need to move these people," said Sonia Adames. Haitians are asking a question that remains unanswered: "Where is the multi-billion dollar aid?" Sonia Adames said that the IDP camps have only received aid through organizations and NGOs that were previously present in Haiti, both from the churches in general and civil society. “But such aid cannot cover the entire cost of the tragedy," she said. (CE) (Agenzia Fides 08/10/2010)