Half million Haitians quit capital

Relief work continues:

Haiti: At least 482,000 people have quit Haiti’s Capital Port-au-Prince since the January 12 earthquake, while international relief work is making progress, said the United Nations on Wednesday.

They have gone to their relatives or friends for shelter in nearby towns which are not affected by the earthquake, said the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs.

Haitian authorities have helped 235,000 people leave Port-au-Prince, most of whom were taken to nearby villages with temporary shelter. According to the UN, food was running out in several towns due to an increased influx of people, which is also straining the treatment capacity of the medical centers there.

Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive said Wednesday that more than 200,000 people were killed in the devastating earthquake, adding that 300,000 others were injured, including 4,000 amputees.

Non-governmental organizations have warned that an estimated 3,000 people who lost their limbs would face a tough time returning to normal life. Doctors now operating on Haitians with the most severe injuries are trying their best to save their patients’ limbs, with amputation as the last-ditch option.

However, several sources said during days after the quake, too many amputation operations were performed inappropriately by inexperienced doctors.

Head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Ann Veneman, is scheduled to arrive in Haiti on Thursday to help launch a massive immunization campaign, which will vaccinate 2.5 million Haitians. “The time is critical in this kind of thing because if you start to get an outbreak then it can spread very quickly in the unhygienic conditions that exist in Haiti,” UNICEF spokesperson Kate Donovan told Xinhua Wednesday.

“Children are 100 percent vulnerable because many children are malnourished so their natural resistance to any disease is really reduced.”

The immunization campaign, which targets measles, diphtheria and tetanus, initially aims to vaccinate 530,00 children under the age of seven.

However, UNICEF hopes to eventually reach 2.5 million adults throughout Haiti, said Donovan, who preferred not to give a timeline due to the sheer difficulty of such an operation.

“It’s a massive vaccination campaign that’s going to start in stages,” she said.

“Initially, we’ll start in Port-au-Prince and then we’ll go out to (other) affected areas.”

UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) will set up immunization centers and make an attempt to find those most vulnerable, said Donavan. Port-Au-Prince, Thursday, Xinhua