Skoll Foundation

Skoll grantee Partners in Health has released a statement on the 1 year anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti. This is a moving account by an organization whose work has made a huge difference in what, a year later, remains a desperate situation. Also, on January 12, 2010, PiH’s David Walton was interviewed on NPR.

Dear Friend,

Today marks one year since the earthquake in Haiti. And today, we stand with our friends and colleagues from our Haitian sister organization, Zanmi Lasante, and with millions of Haitians in Haiti and abroad to remember that terrible day — to remember both those who died, and those who suffered and continue to face the painful reality of a Haiti post-January 12, 2010.

Let’s not mince words. Conditions remain grim.

This is particularly true for over a million internally displaced people living in crowded Port-au-Prince camps. Yet while there should be righteous indignation about the conditions in the camps, we must continue to highlight the plight of the urban and rural poor throughout Haiti whose struggle against poverty and injustice pre-dated the earthquake and has been made immeasurably more difficult by the disaster. The cholera epidemic — due to lack of access to clean water and sanitation against a backdrop of malnutrition and inadequate health services in much of the country — is a graphic illustration of the ongoing need. It is easy to understand that optimism would be in short supply.

There are, however, glimmers of hope. With your help, Partners In Health and Zanmi Lasante (PIH/ZL) have shown that progress through collaboration is possible and effective.

See what PIH/ZL accomplished in 2010 and call on the international community to do more.

PIH/ZL are not alone in doing good work. The Haitian Ministry of Health and our many partner organizations are doing so as well; the most important and significant work has been building lasting infrastructure and improving the capacity of Haitians to meet the challenges they face.

For recovery to be effective and lasting, Haitians must be the main actors. They must have a voice in how aid money is spent in their country and be the principal agents of the work being done. Currently, the mechanism for that is the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) — a group dedicated to creating a plan to best make use of the current influx of aid. Rather than a collection of temporary solutions consisting of tarps and tents, the Commission will lay the building blocks for the future for Haiti: hospitals to heal the sick, roads to help farmers bring food to market, municipal water supplies to stop deaths from cholera, and schools, at all levels, to build Haitian capacity.

Join PIH/ZL in calling for the Haitians to be the main actors in Haiti’s recovery and in the coordination of foreign aid.

Plans exist to make all of this happen. Yet Haiti desperately needs an international solidarity movement, not unlike the one that helped to end apartheid in South Africa, to assure that the funding and coordination needed to actualize a plan for Haitians rebuilding Haiti will be realized.

Such a movement would share the goals of supporting:

1. The creation of Haitian jobs in the reconstruction,
2. Haiti’s ability to mandate that the 10,000 NGOs and foreign government-led projects adhere to a shared plan, and
3. The development of large-scale public infrastructure including health, education, water and sanitation that will reverse the impoverishment of the Haitian people.

Today, see what PIH/ZL have accomplished and join us in building a movement of solidarity for Haiti and her future by calling for the continued support of a Haitian-led solution to rebuild Haiti.

In solidarity and with renewed hope for peace and justice on Earth in the coming year,

Joia Mukherjee
Chief Medical Officer
Partners In Health?

Tags: Haiti, Partners In Health, Paul Farmer