Haiti after six months
July 27th, 2010
By Keith Martin, Special to The Windsor Star July 27, 2010
As Haitians marked the sombre six-month anniversary of the earthquake that devastated their lives, a sense of deep frustration continues to permeate their country. Aid monies are not getting where they are needed.
Port-au-Prince still looks as if the earthquake had struck only a week ago as teams labour to clean up the debris by hand or with outdated equipment that is in scant supply. Hundreds of thousands remain displaced in camps, living in squalor under tents and tarps, while relief supplies and more robust shelters sit on their main airport’s tarmac.
The response to this disaster continues to suffer from a lack of co-ordination between governments, NGOs and other international bodies.
This scenario of weak logistics in the face of devastation and massive need is not unusual. Indeed, it is the status quo. Just weeks after Haiti’s calamity, Chile was hit with a huge earthquake. The humanitarian response was slow, awkward, and unco-ordinated.
From the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia in 2004, and the earthquakes that levelled parts of Pakistan, to the devastation that hurricane Katrina inflicted on the southern U.S., it is obvious that we are failing to learn from these tragedies in order to improve our collective response to natural disasters.
When calamity strikes, the international response can vary in speed and quantity. The response to Haiti was large and quick. The response to the earthquakes in Pakistan and Afghanistan were paltry and slow. However, all share one disturbing feature: the co-ordination and distribution of emergency assistance on the ground is laboured and chaotic.
We always begin from square one to identify, acquire and deploy urgently needed humanitarian goods and equipment. No one group is in charge and thus nobody knows what supplies are needed or available.
Mobilizing whatever domestic capacity is still viable within the affected country is haphazard and disjointed. Emergency supplies that are locally available lie unused or misused while the need mounts by the hour.
In responding to a disaster, time is not your friend. If a person does not receive water within six days (less if they are injured) they will die. Without simple cleaning agents and antibiotics, ordinary infections can spread rapidly, resulting in amputations and deaths that could have been prevented.
So what can be done to rectify this problem? We can take some lessons from what we do on a much smaller scale when responding to emergencies here at home. In North America, communities have a 24-hour, 911 command-and-control system that connects the appropriate professional capabilities and assets with the emergency. If we use this model, expanded to a significantly larger scale, the world could have a robust, co-ordinated and effective emergency response mechanism.
Such an international 911 system should have a command-and-control centre under the auspices of the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which has the mandate to respond to natural disasters.
The centre should develop a database that pre-identifies the assets needed in an emergency: heavy lift, emergency response personnel, water-purification equipment, non-perishable foods, extraction machinery, temporary shelters, field hospitals, medical teams, rescue dogs, etc.
This database should have information about the emergency-response capabilities of nations and non-governmental organizations (i.e., the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, etc.). Some emergency assets should also be pre-deployed to three regions that are frequently affected by natural disasters: Central America, Asia Minor and Southeast Asia. The Red Cross already does some pre-deployment, which makes it easier for them to rapidly send life-saving supplies where they are needed.
Canada and the United States should lead a multinational effort to create an international rapid response system. There is a compelling – and perhaps selfish – reason to do this.
There is a 100 per cent certainty that, as the Pacific and North American tectonic plates grind against each other, a catastrophic earthquake will hit the west coast of North America. This disaster, like others before it, and others to come, will need a massive, rapid and co-ordinated response from the international community.
Humanitarian agencies and nations cannot deal with these calamities alone. When disaster strikes, a worldwide 911 system will save lives and reduce harm. As Haiti shows us once again, we simply cannot continue to plod, struggle and stumble in the face of nature’s wrath.
Keith Martin is a Liberal MP and medical doctor who has worked extensively in the developing world to address humanitarian disasters.
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