The needs in Haiti are immense, but the Red Cross continues to make progress helping earthquake survivors in need. Red Cross teams are assessing ways to meet immediate needs and also how to provide long-term recovery assistance, such as continued provision of household supplies and addressing emergency shelter.
· Flights with humanitarian relief supplies continue to arrive in Port-au-Prince and now that specialized cranes are in place, the seaport is handling 350 containers per day.
· The Red Cross is producing more than 1.2 million liters of water per day, enough for 300,000 people. Water distribution points are in 110 settlements with sanitation facilities in 12 settlements. Additionally, the American Red Cross has provided more than 1 million water-purification sachets and containers that allow people to clean and carry water.
· Red Cross distributions of food and relief items (blankets, kitchen sets, hygiene kits, buckets, water containers, laundry soap/detergent, and mosquito nets) have reached nearly 37,000 families (or 185,000 people).
· Shelter and sanitation remain urgent needs. The Red Cross is working to provide a range of immediate shelter assistance, and we also are working on a strategy to meet ongoing and long-term housing reconstruction needs. In addition, Red Cross Mass Sanitation teams are working to build latrines as quickly as possible in Port-au-Prince and Leogane. More than 150 latrines have been constructed to date.
The American Red Cross has spent or committed $80 million to meet the most urgent needs of earthquake survivors.
- This funding is aimed at immediate relief, with 69 percent of the funds spent or committed by the American Red Cross have been for food and water; 20 percent have been for shelter; and 11 percent for health and family services.
The Red Cross is helping survivors address health needs and the emerging threat of the spread of infectious disease.
- To help meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands injured, Red Cross teams from around the world partnered to establish two field hospitals and four mobile healthcare clinics, which are providing medical services to up to 1,300 people per day.
- The American Red Cross has provided nearly 750 units of blood for earthquake survivors and funded $600,000 worth of food for the mobile clinics.
· To prevent the spread of diseases common after disasters of this scale, the Red Cross is supporting an immunization and hygiene promotion campaign led by the Haitian government’s Ministry of Health and several United Nations agencies that will initially help protect and educate more than 250,000 children. A second phase will target 530,000 children in all affected areas.
The American Red Cross is in Haiti as a part of the broader and coordinated Red Cross and Red Crescent network.
· The American Red Cross has more than 100 relief specialists and volunteers helping with the relief efforts in Haiti (including Creole interpreters on the USNS Comfort hospital ship). In total, more than 600 Red Cross and Red Crescent workers from 30 countries around the world are in Haiti working with more than 2,500 Haitian Red Cross volunteers in areas such as health, logistics, and relief supply distribution.
· Each Red Cross society team has its own roles and expertise on the ground. Working together, the global Red Cross network provides a very powerful engine for relief and recovery.
· This is already the largest single-country relief operation in global Red Cross history in terms of emergency response teams deployed. The number of teams in Haiti is greater than the number that responded to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which spanned 14 countries.
Because of the generosity of donors, people in Haiti will receive more than immediate relief — they will receive resources, support and training from the Red Cross that will help them recover and rebuild in the years ahead.
· It is clear that what took minutes to destroy will take many years and the collective support from governments and relief agencies across the world to help mend. The American Red Cross is working in close coordination with other organizations and will collaborate on and support long-term recovery projects.
· The American Red Cross is applying experience gained following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. For the past five years, we have been working with partners to construct water and sanitation systems, providing emotional support and healthcare, building shelters, restoring livelihoods, and preparing communities for the next disaster. We plan to offer a similar level of support in close collaboration with Red Cross partners and other international and local aid organizations in Haiti.
· The American Red Cross received $6 million from MTV’s Hope for Haiti Now telethon. This money will be used to assist 36,000 families (about 180,000 people) with basic shelter materials and relief supplies such as mosquito nets, family tents and hygiene kits.
· People can donate in support of the relief Haiti at www.redcross.org or by calling 1-800-REDCROSS. Mobile donors can text “Haiti” to 90999 to make a $10 contribution.
· $10 donation would provide a first aid kit equipped with enough ointment and bandages for a Red Cross responder to treat 15-20 injured earthquake survivors. A $10 donation also can provide a family with two water cans to store clean drinking water, basic first aid supplies or a blanket.
If additional support is request by a Red Cross or Red Crescent society in another country, the American Red Cross can tap into our cadre of emergency response workers, who are specially trained to manage and participate in international emergency operations.
We typically recruit new people to the team every 1-2 years, who have at least two years experience abroad in a volunteer or professional context, or at least three years of national or international disaster response deployments. Potential candidates must also possess personal attributes such as diplomacy, teamwork and problem-solving skills, cultural sensitivity, tolerance, flexibility and the ability to function effectively in a demanding and often rugged environment. Our responders are also available on short notice for a minimum of four-week assignments, as well as for annual training and refresher courses. Foreign language skills, specifically Spanish, French or Arabic, are desirable.
The Red Cross is also unable to accept collections of items such as clothing, food or cleaning supplies. The cost to sort, package and distribute these types of items is almost always greater than the cost of purchasing the items locally, and it is logistically impossible to distribute the items as the sender intended.
