CNN & AJ English: 8 Days Later 1,000s Of Injured Are Still Dying! Where Are The Medical Supplies?

[Turborama]

Run time: 06:52 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAlVMHAzbWg   Posted on YouTube: January 21, 2010 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: January 21, 2010 By DU Member: Turborama Views on DU: 1199

 
This isn't "disaster porn", as others have suggested. Without reports like this we'd be clueless as to the real situation on the ground in Haiti.

Check here for transcript: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/acd.html

This is how Al Jazeera English are reporting the situation...


Haiti's quake survivors desperate for aid

Aid has still not reached everyone in the affected areas more than a week after Haiti was devastated by a major earthquake.

Thousands of survivors on the streets, in camps and temporary shelters remain desperate for aid, even as the Caribbean nation continues to experience aftershocks.

Al Jazeera's Tony Birtley visits one of the tent cities in Port-au-Prince. (21 Jan 10)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcFwBuQHlVQ

[sabrina 1]

1. The reporters on the ground are saying the same thing

Where is the help? Why, eg, have they not used the dock where Luxury liners don't seem to be having a problem dropping off passengers in northern Haiti? When asked, the response was that the military had decided the dock was 'not suitable'.

Today, there were two more after-shocks. One almost as strong as the first, the second was around 4.5.

Wouldn't it have been better to have evacuated people, the injured and elderly and children out of the city and directed them to areas that are safer?

It is heart-breaking.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. 1 roads from that dock to here are not presicely open

2 they actually brought the port of Port au Prince to operatioanal status like a few hours ago per BBC.

3.- Now the trickle of help will move on to a potential flood

4.- Second wave is a sad reality of this.

I keep repeating this... if this was downtown LA... we would still see a second wave... it is the extent of this.

[sabrina 1]

7. Except they aren't blaming it on the roads. T hey are claiming

that they are worried about security. That is a false claim as most of the people there, rescue workers, doctors, reporters etc. say there is no security issue. That the people are very calm and are thrilled to see anyone who is bringing help.

They are treating a catastrophe as if they were at war with the people. Screaming at people, waving guns etc. Not to mention the fact that before the U.S. took control of the airport, the many other countries who got there before them, had not problems with traveling to where they needed to go.

I agree with the commenter below. This is 'shock doctrine'. They are there to protect U.S. interests and lives are second to that. Even Gupta and Anderson Cooper are saying as much in as nice a way as they can. They don't understand why the Military is making this claim about 'security'. They, both said, have had no reason to fear at all.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Actually they have had UN troops go out with teama

and even the ICRC had to beat a hasty retreat from one distribution,

[jberryhill]

11. There is no "dock"

Cruise ships that visit Labadee moor offshore and ferry the passengers to the beach in small craft.

[jberryhill]

10. There is no "dock", to answer one of your questions....

The vessel is moored offshore, and passengers are ferried to the beach in small craft called tenders.

This is where the boat stops:



This is a typical cruise ship passenger tender:



The location in question is a beach on the northern coast of Haiti, separated by a mountain range and poor roads to Port Au Prince.

Royal Caribbean, btw, has donated over $1M to relief organizations, and its cruise ships do offload food, water, and medical supplies at Labadee, but there is no way to move significant quantities of supplies from there to Port Au Prince.

The mountains in question are visible in the photograph above.

[bbgrunt]

2. more shock doctrine--enhanced by planned incompetence

and neglect. NO redux. Play up the looting and security needs and ignore the real needs--then when the natives have been moved out to "survival camps", move in the casinos and high-rise luxury apartments on prime waterfront.

[aquart]

8. And this is being done on Obama's orders?

So you're calling Obama a mass murderer?

[Wilms]

3. Population reduction.

Here are the death panels.

[saorsa]

4. Also check out Doctors

without Borders website, they have been having terrible trouble getting their supplies into Haiti, planes turned back etc.
Earlier this evening I saw a video, not sure who the source was, doctors were assessing a victim. He was a strong, healthy looking man, conscious and aware of his situation, possibly with a crushing injury to his chest but because they did not have the equipment they needed to intubate him he was in serious danger. The doctors were obviously frustrated, and they are facing the same awful thing with many patients. People who should be able to be saved are dying.
Please call the White House and share you concern about the bottlenecks at the airport etc,. there has got to be a way to speed up the transport of equipment and supplies.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. The port was finally brought back to operations per BBC today

The bottleneck at the airport cannot be fixed that easily... they are now goign to be able to bring like ships.

A ship has that much cargo capacity.

[Ticonderoga]

17. The Military has the capacity to

lay down steel grate runways within hours capable of handling large cargo planes. There is some other motive behind this "incompetence".

[dipsydoodle]

9. It wasn't just MSF

it was most or all of the medical aid agencies particularly those with search and rescue teams who would have been most effective in the first few days. Such delays have also given rise to secondary infections such as gangerine and the resultant number of amputations, some of necessity , without anaesthetic.

In the USA I think that some of this news is only just reaching you whereas in Europe we've had the brutal truth all the way through.

[lakercub]

12. What can the White House do about the airport?

That airport was a disaster before the quake. It is a fact of life that using that airport is going to be a problem and there isn't much that can be done to speed it up. Stopping the bottleneck at the airport is not going to happen, the airport runway was horribly designed and is always going to be a bottleneck.

[lakercub]

13. More on the logistics

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jkG6AVse8STcejoWk_o4-4_AuZIA

I'm sorry, I'm sure many things have gone poorly, but I also think people are doing there best. This isn't like Katrina where people sat on their asses and did nothing. The infrastructure in Haiti was in terrible shape to begin with, which makes the earthquake, and the resultant aid difficulties, that much worse.

The two best things that can come out of all of this are that countries that are in known areas of geological instability (or high flood areas, hurricane paths, etc.) will be more motivated to do what they can to shore up their infrastructure (this includes the US as Katrina will attest) and that the "first-world" countries will look upon these countries as countries in need of assistance...not as pawns in bigger geopolitical games. US policy toward poorer nations in our own hemisphere has been shabby, ruthless, divisive, and, at times, criminal. The US, Russia, China, and other powers have, for their own purposes, fomented instability in so many of these places that it is no wonder so many developing nations are totally unprepared for these things. That needs to end.

[lakercub]

14. and more

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/were-doing-lot-haiti-very-small-airpo

[Turborama]

15. AP: Haiti elderly suffer with help just a mile away

By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU - Associated Press Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- More than a week after their nursing home collapsed, dozens of elderly Haitians are still begging for food and medicine in a downtown Port-au-Prince slum barely a mile from the international airport where tons of aid are pouring in.

"It's as if everybody has forgotten us, nobody cares," said Phileas Julien, 78, a sometimes delirious blind man in a wheelchair who has appointed himself spokesman for the 84 surviving residents. "Or maybe they really do just want us to starve to death."

The Jan. 12 earthquake killed six residents and two more have since died of hunger and exhaustion. Several more were barely clinging to life Wednesday evening. They struggle to survive in the midst of a squalid camp that was created in the hospice's garden by people who fled the quake's destruction.

=snip=

"We're hungry, we're so, so hungry," lamented 77-year-old Felicie Colin, one of those who still had enough energy to speak intelligibly at sunset Wednesday.

Full article: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/haiti/story/1279259.html

[Lars77]

18. MSF had to buy a saw for amputations at the market yesterday

They are still without loads of critical supplies.