Red Cross Blogs

Moving on (Haiti)

By Pete Garratt
June 4, 2010 at 9:45 am

These words seem to sum up the world’s attitude to places like Haiti. Once in the eye of a media storm of attention and public good will, understandably the focus has moved on. The recent election, the world cup, economic woes, another celebrity / political / sporting scandal understandably capture our attention. I too am beginning to move on from Haiti as the last of our immediate response programmes come to a close. Rest assured though that the Red Cross focus on Haiti has not diminished as our recovery team take up the baton and undertake the necessary detailed planning of our engagement for the coming years. In fact we’ve been liaising closely together since the start with an eye to next steps.

One team in particular, our mass sanitation emergency response unit, subject of several blogs this year, has come to an end though the work it has been carrying out will continue. A longer-term team is now continuing to work with the people in two large camps to meet their sanitation needs. This is so important. The initial rapid emergency latrines we put up are designed to last two to three months and we are working to replace them with sturdier and more enduring models. We’ve already replaced 50 of the rapid ones. I’ve been impressed with how well the 300 we’ve put in have fared, particularly so in places where the surrounding families have paid such close attention to the cleanliness of them. A welcome reminder about how important it has been for us to engage community around key hygiene practice messages.

We’ve organised the removal of 30 tonnes of garbage from the camps each week and improved camp drainage, critical to prevent disease spreading during fierce rains. Additionally, eleven bathing blocks have provided extra privacy for females and males to wash. These are good achievements, but there have been great challenges in handling such a dense urban environment with little space to build and high water tables. The difficulties in meeting all the needs in a social context where pre-earthquake ills have transferred into the camps where we are working have kept us on our toes too. We’re still there, still engaging, making progress but also in it for the long haul.

For me, what remains now is to formally evaluate the performance of the sanitation team and to ensure that we incorporate all the lessons learned into the preparation, equipment and ongoing training of future teams for the next big disaster. There won’t be much time to rest on any laurels though. There’s plenty to take the place of Haiti. This week alone we are reacting to the first hurricane of the central American season, Agatha; to escalating food insecurity hitting Niger and Chad; to deepening humanitarian crisis in Somalia and Yemen where fewer and fewer humanitarian agencies are able to continue operating due to security considerations – though the Red Cross with its careful, neutral positioning can and does.

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Tags: disaster, earthquake, ERU, Haiti earthquake, haiti earthquake appeal, water and sanitation

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 4th, 2010 at 9:45 am and is filed under Emergencies, International. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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