Haiti Struggles with Humanitarian Disaster in Aftermath of Deadly Storms

As many as 1,000 people have died and an estimated one million Haitians have been left homeless. Rescue groups have no access to many interior villages across the southern region and to Gonaives, Haiti’s third-largest city, which has been cut off after a bridge collapsed. Much of Gonaives remains under water. At least 80 percent of the estimated 300,000 residents have been displaced or otherwise affected by the flooding. The city’s population has been stranded for days without food or drinking water. Many are making do sleeping on rooftops, with their animals, and furniture, waiting for the water level to drop. Throughout Haiti, bridges, roads, clinics and homes have been washed away.

Dr. Paul Farmer is the co-founder of Partners in Health, a group that provides free medical care in Haiti. After visiting Gonzaives over the weekend, he wrote an urgent appeal for aid supplies to be delivered to Haiti immediately. Dr. Farmer wrote: “After 25 years spent working in Haiti and having grown up in Florida, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as painful as what I just witnessed in Gonaives.”

Dr. Farmer is renowned in the world of global healthcare. He is a professor of medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School and the author of several books. He joins us now from Boston.

Dr. Paul Farmer, Professor of medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School and is the co-founder of Partners in Health. He is also associate chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. His books include Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor and From Outrage to Courage: Women Taking Action for Health and Justice.