“The main road between Port-au-Prince and Jérémie, the biggest city in the southwest of Haiti remains impassable for vehicles,” explains Hélène Robin, head of Handicap International’s emergency operations. “We are going to organize the transport of humanitarian aid by local carriers with boats. This will enable humanitarian organizations working in isolated regions to receive their supplies of equipment and to distribute them without waiting for roads to reopen.”
The organization’s emergency team traveled to the southwest of Haiti on Tuesday to implement this response. Another team is scheduled to leave tomorrow with a supply of mobility aids before making the first distributions to people with disabilities or injuries, who have lost everything in the disaster.
The Handicap International team will:
- assess the capacities of health centers and hospitals to determine the support they need
- mobilize physical therapists trained in Haiti to provide support in hospitals in the southwest, where the largest number of victims are being treated
- receive more than 15 cubic meters of mobility aids by plane from its contingency storage facility in Dubai
- conduct an assessment in the northwest of Haiti, an area also severely affected by the hurricane, in order to identify the needs of the most vulnerable people
A psychosocial project manager arrived in Port-au-Prince to help victims recover from the trauma of the disaster and a dozen emergency specialists are providing support to our 100+ team.