Wednesday 20 January 2010
ShelterBox tents in Haiti put to immediate use
Injured girl in Bernard Mews hospital, Port au Prince, where ShelterBox tents are being used to treat the large number of injured people. Photographer: Mark PearsonShelterBox tents are being used by hospitals in Port au Prince to provide emergency shelter for post surgery patients in Haiti’s capital.
The first ShelterBoxes to arrive in the country have been immediately utilised by doctors in desperate need of equipment to help treat huge numbers of injured Haitians.
The Response Team in Haiti are facing huge challenges on a daily basis. Large aftershocks were felt first thing this morning Hatian time but the team report they are all ok.
ShelterBox Response Team member Mark Pearson, who has been in Port au Prince since Thursday, said: ‘The first tents are being used by Bernard Mews hospital in Port au Prince. The tents have been immediately put into use by doctors for post surgery patients.
‘The doctors are desperate for all our equipment. The hospital has no electricity, no food, no running water. The injured are constantly coming in with untreated injuries.'
Doctors fear the number of people needing amputations could spiral into the thousands. Amputations are having to be carried out to free people from rubble, to prevent the spread of gangrene and when all attempts to save a severely damaged limb fail.
Planned distribution
400 more ShelterBoxes arrived in Port au Prince yesterday from Miami, accompanied by ShelterBox General Manager and Response Team member Lasse Petersen.
Click here to watch a video of ShelterBoxes arriving in Port au Prince from Miami
‘We’re planning to distribute more ShelterBoxes for emergency medical cases and hospital use today,’ said Lasse. ‘We’re working closely with the UN, ACTED, Rotarians and Haitian authorities to gauge resources and priority needs.
‘We’ll be investigating a major distribution area which at the moment is likely to be Leogane where the epicentre of the earthquake was. The scale of destruction here is even worse than in Port au Prince and there’s an estimated hundred thousand people in need of emergency shelter.’
Another 400 boxes are set to arrive in Port au Prince today on a freighter from Miami, USA while, in the UK, 700 boxes are set to fly out from Newquay, Cornwall tonight directly into Port au Prince. Close to 200 ShelterBoxes are also expected to fly out from France to Port au Prince later on today and 250 boxes from prepositioned stock in Curacao are due to arrive in Port au Prince tomorrow.
Virgin Atlantic has agreed to fly another 500 ShelterBoxes into Miami where the ShelterBox Logistics Team operating from there will send them down to Haiti. More than 3,000 ShelterBoxes have been committed to Haiti and more are being packed at ShelterBox HQ.
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ShelterBox Operations – Teams on the ground
The ShelterBox Response Team members on the ground in Port au Prince are David Eby (US), Wayne Robinson (US), Mark Pearson (UK) and Lasse Petersen (UK). These are expected to be joined John Diksa (FR), Jane Nash (UK) and Gary McCafferty (UK). Jane Nash, who is a doctor, will be operating as the team’s field medic.
The ShelterBox Logistics Team in Miami, who are coordinating the delivery of aid from there, are Mark Dyer (US), John Lacquey (US) and Steve Tonkinson (US). They will be joined by Elke Kruger (DE). Elke is the first Response Team member from Germany to be deployed by ShelterBox.
There is a second forward logistics team in Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic of Ian Neal (UK), John Mackie (US), Andrew Biss (UK) and Sean Halbert (UK).
Click here to watch a video of ShelterBox Response Team members David Eby and Wayne Robinson collecting ShelterBoxes at Port au Prince airport.
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