Humanitarian aid is being organized for Haiti.

Five days after the earthquake that devastated the southwest of the Caribbean country and left nearly 2,200 dead, the Haitian authorities and their international partners want to structure humanitarian aid in order to avoid the scenario of 2010, where the capital experienced disorganization after a first earthquake.

With nearly 53,000 houses completely destroyed and more than 77,000 others damaged in the disaster of August 14, the priority Thursday August 19 of the authorities and humanitarian actors is to avoid the concentration of people in large informal camps.

"In order not to repeat the mistakes of 2010, there will be no distribution of tents, there will be no creation of camps. We will adopt strategies to allow people to repair, to rebuild their houses," Federica Cecchet, coordinator for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Haiti, told AFP.

"We must not fall back into the pitfalls of 2010 to have camps all over the place, which we cannot manage or absorb," said Jerry Chandler, director of Civil Protection, adding wanting to manage " within the prescribed standards: the people affected must be in dignity ".

In addition to food, drinking water and emergency medical aid, plastic sheeting, but also boards and nails have already been sent via the first road convoys from Port-au-Prince to the stricken regions, Haitian Civil Protection said Thursday.

Faced with the tragedy, the international community quickly showed its support by offering both technical and financial support.

The United States chartered eight army helicopters from Honduras to continue medical evacuation efforts of the most critical injured to specialized hospitals in the Haitian capital.

Brazil announced Thursday evening that it would send "search and rescue experts to collapsed urban structures and medicine kits."

Landlocked areas

A field hospital will also be installed by the American army in the city of Les Cayes, capital of the south, the department where the earthquake toll is the most significant both in human and material terms.

"We have Air Force medics over there to help," General Hank Taylor said Thursday from the Pentagon.

"The hospital structure is provided via the rotations of our helicopters […] to be able to help and provide first aid in the hospital", he added.

The USS Arlington, a US Navy transport vessel, and a British Navy boat will be deployed to Haiti to facilitate US helicopter operations. 

The European Union, for its part, has mobilized 3 million euros in aid, to which are added material contributions from member countries, in particular a water purification module made available by France as well as a water purification station. purification provided by Spain.

For better management of resources, IOM has established an Internet platform on which non-food donations are listed, used for the construction of shelters: only humanitarian actors duly registered with the Haitian government will be able to collect equipment, specifying the details of their disaster distribution operations.

"It allows a more equitable distribution of aid, to locate [the places] where there has already been aid so as not to always return to the same areas and avoid duplication," explains Federica Cecchet.

"Now, we know very well that there are NGOs which are disembarking, some even arrive with private helicopters in certain areas of the country without the government knowing," she laments.

After the earthquake which, in January 2010, killed more than 200,000 people in the capital Port-au-Prince and its surroundings, the uncontrolled interventions of foreign groups in the country had reinforced Haiti's nickname: "Republic of NGOs ".

Living in more isolated areas, disaster victims had been totally ignored by humanitarian actors acting without accountability to national authorities, then unable to respond to the emergency, because the earthquake had killed many senior civil servants and destroyed almost all of the ministries and administrative buildings.

With AFP & Reuters

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