Haiti Earthquake: Partners in Health
The devastation in Haiti is truly heartbreaking. It’s impossible to read or watch the coverage without tearing up at the indiscriminate nature of this disaster. I keep hoping that more aid will get through, but also that short-term assistance is coordinated and that rescue and recovery efforts — to the extent practical — minimize waste and chaos and maximize the chances that Haiti will be able to successfully rebuild. In other words, that international aid organizations and governments work together, reduce turf wars, put aside profit and greed, and do right by the country and its people.
Tonight, a segment on the Rachel Maddow Show introduced me to Partners in Health, a primarily U.S.-funded organization that works in the suburbs and ex-urbs of Port-au-Prince delivering health care services to the Haitian people. Its largely indigenous staffers, well supplied at the moment, are seeing earthquake patients right now. Pulitzer-prize-winning author Tracy Kidder, who wrote an article yesterday in the New York Times about Haiti, its history, and the tangled tale of humanitarian assistance there, spoke movingly about supporting Partners in Health and organizations like it that build grass-roots institutions, and about being mindful about where to donate now and in the future.
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