Reanudarán evacuación de heridos en Haití
Redacción
BBC Mundo
Los médicos habían advertido que cientos de haitianos podían morir por falta de tratamiento especializado.
La Casa Blanca anunció que Estados Unidos reanudará temprano el lunes los vuelos de evacuación de heridos de Haití.
La iniciativa había sido suspendida el miércoles pasado por problemas logísticos, según el gobierno de EE.UU.
Cientos de haitianos con heridas graves por el terremoto del 12 de enero han sido trasladados ya a hospitales estadounidenses.
Sin embargo, preocupaciones acerca de la falta de instalaciones disponibles llevaron a la suspensión de varios vuelos la semana pasada.
Niegan motivación financiera
La mayoría de los haitianos heridos fueron atendidos en el estado de la Florida, informa el corresponsal de la BBC en Estados Unidos, Richard Lister.
Sin embargo, la semana pasada el gobernador del estado Charlie Crist, le advirtió al gobierno del presidente Barack Obama que el sistema de salud de Florida estaba llegando al punto de saturación, agrega Lister.
Ha habido problemas también con encontrar hospitales lo suficientemente cerca a los aeropuertos que pueden recibir a los gigantescos aviones de transporte militar utilizados para evacuar a los heridos.
Como indica el corresponsal, también hubo preguntas acerca de quién pagaría el costo de los servicios médicos.
La Casa Blanca insiste en que la suspensión de los vuelos de evacuación no se debió a asuntos financieros.
"Huérfanos" tendrían familiares
Al menos uno de los supuestos huérfanos aseguró que sus padres estaban vivos.
De otra parte, trabajadores humanitarios en Haití dijeron que algunos niños identificados como huérfanos que estaban siendo trasladados fuera del país por un grupo de estadounidenses aparentemente tenían familiares vivos.
Un vocero para un organismo humanitario internacional dijo que al menos una niña insistió en que sus padres estaban vivos.
Los estadounidenses, pertenecientes a grupos religiosos del estado de Idaho, están bajo arresto en la capital haitiana, Puerto Príncipe.
clic Lea: Arrestos por tráfico de niños
Un portavoz del gobierno haitiano dijo que los estadounidenses fueron sorprendidos cruzando la frontera hacia República Dominicana con más de 30 niños.
Los estadounidenses -miembros de una organización caritativa en el estado de Idaho- dijeron a la BBC que estaban transportando a los menores a un orfelinato.
In Quake's Wake, Haiti Faces Leadership Void
Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
President René Préval of Haiti, center, spoke with Haitians between railings at the presidential palace.
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By GINGER THOMPSON and MARC LACEY
Published: January 31, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The journalists had assembled and the cameras were rolling. Seated at center stage were the American ambassador and the American general in charge of the United States troops deployed here.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
A Tent in Port-au-Prince
Related
U.S. to Resume Airlift of Injured Haitians (February 1, 2010)
In Haiti, a Puzzling Drought of Tears (January 31, 2010)
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
More Multimedia on the Haiti Earthquake
At the back of the room, wearing blue jeans and a somber expression, stood President René Préval, half-listening to the updates on efforts to help Haiti recover from its devastating earthquake while scanning his cellphone for messages. Then he wandered away without a word.
That moment last Wednesday was revealing of the leadership crisis taking hold in Haiti as it faces the task of rebuilding almost every corner of Port-au-Prince, the capital.
Foreign nations have sent hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance, only to find the government too weak to harness it. Virtually every symbol of this country's political system vanished into the rubble. The seat of government has been reduced to little more than a platform beneath a towering mango tree outside a police station near the airport.
Parliamentary elections have been indefinitely postponed. Radio programs have become soap boxes for opposition leaders to strike the government while it is down. A nation that had been looking forward to a rare, peaceful transfer of power is now experiencing familiar — albeit faint — rumblings of chaos and coups.
During the greatest disaster Haiti has ever faced, its president has seemed incapable of pulling himself together, much less this deeply divided society.
"What the country has seen since the earthquake is not a leader, but a broken man," said Mirlande Manigat, a former first lady of Haiti who makes no secret of her presidential aspirations. "He's not doing. He's not speaking. He's not acting. He's not moving. And if he's not moving, how's the country supposed to move?"
In the immediate aftermath of the quake, Mr. Préval seemed to wander around in a daze, lapsing into moments of disorientation. The morning after, he sent a taped message to the nation, his only one so far, to a radio station, dispassionately reporting details of the damage and urging listeners, "Kembe," the Creole term for "hold on."
In recent days he has begun to take steps to reassert authority and restore his government, but given Haiti's turbulent and unforgiving politics, the damage may have been done.
Mr. Préval makes no apologies for his low profile. "I don't do politics, O.K.?" he huffed in one recent interview. "My work is to find ways to ease the pain of those suffering, instead of being trailed by journalists to pose for pictures with people who suffer."
He boasts that government workers have cleared the streets of about 170,000 bodies. But with so little else to show for his efforts in the nearly three weeks since the earthquake, few are convinced that Mr. Préval is doing anything at all. Despite a flood of foreign aid, hundreds of thousands of people continue to languish in squalid shelters.
Publicly, the international organizations here emphasize at almost every turn that they are working under Mr. Préval's direction. Privately, United Nations and American officials said they did not believe he was up to the task.
Because of concerns about the government's history of corruption and inefficiency, only a fraction of the aid flowing into Haiti is permitted to pass through government channels.
The disappointment in the president seems most palpable. Judith Marceline, a former nurse who lost everything in the quake but the dirty flowered dress she was wearing Sunday, said that she stood in line for hours to vote for Mr. Préval in 2006. Today she wonders why.
"When he needed us, we went out to support him," she said. "Now that we need him, where is he?"Mr. Préval, like Haiti, is no stranger to crisis. In fact, he rose to power as its antidote. After several volatile decades marked by dictatorships and populist governments, the simple, soft-spoken agronomist appealed to a country looking for a cool technocrat to lower the political temperature.
During his first term in office, from 1996 to 2001, he is credited with building dozens of public schools, putting tens of thousands of people to work and issuing titles to thousands of acres of farmland.
In his second term, which began in 2006, Haiti experienced modest, but hopeful, levels of growth and security.
Political tensions, however, began to flare after Mr. Préval's handpicked electoral council disqualified more than a dozen opposition parties from taking part in this year's elections. The move put Mr. Préval at odds with his old mentor, former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who, even in exile, remains adored by the poor.
Mr. Aristide and other opposition leaders accused Mr. Préval of trying to stack the Parliament so that he could make the constitutional changes necessary to run for a third term.
"The only way to confront Préval's plan is to mobilize the population," Evans Paul, a former presidential candidate, told The Associated Press in early January. "The people have a right to rebel whenever the government is acting antidemocratically."
Since the earthquake, its hand strengthened by government weakness, the opposition has seized on the leadership vacuum as another truncheon to swing at the president.
Slowly it appears that Mr. Préval has gotten the message, many say.
In recent days, he sent his prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, to address a meeting of donors in Montreal. He ordered public works projects outside the capital to get back to work, and children in those areas to return to school.
He appointed a group of government ministers and private-sector leaders to serve as liaisons between his government and the hundreds of international organizations delivering assistance to this country. Most notably, he has begun to stake out a place on the public stage, giving interviews and holding news conferences. On Friday, he spoke at length to reporters at Radio Television Caraibes, outlining his vision for a new, less congested capital, where the government employs people to help clear the rubble and rebuild their own homes.
Responding to criticism of his displays of distress after the earthquake, he said, "Even though I am president, I am human first."
To those who have suggested that the recovery ought to be moving more quickly, he said, "They underestimate the magnitude of the problem."
And when asked for a political forecast, he sounded more hopeful than sure, saying that he would try to push ahead with the presidential election, scheduled for November, as the best way to guarantee political stability.
"I want this to be a new country," he said, waving his hands for emphasis. "I want it to be totally different."
Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
President René Préval of Haiti, center, spoke with Haitians between railings at the presidential palace.
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By GINGER THOMPSON and MARC LACEY
Published: January 31, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The journalists had assembled and the cameras were rolling. Seated at center stage were the American ambassador and the American general in charge of the United States troops deployed here.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
A Tent in Port-au-Prince
Related
U.S. to Resume Airlift of Injured Haitians (February 1, 2010)
In Haiti, a Puzzling Drought of Tears (January 31, 2010)
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
More Multimedia on the Haiti Earthquake
At the back of the room, wearing blue jeans and a somber expression, stood President René Préval, half-listening to the updates on efforts to help Haiti recover from its devastating earthquake while scanning his cellphone for messages. Then he wandered away without a word.
That moment last Wednesday was revealing of the leadership crisis taking hold in Haiti as it faces the task of rebuilding almost every corner of Port-au-Prince, the capital.
Foreign nations have sent hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance, only to find the government too weak to harness it. Virtually every symbol of this country's political system vanished into the rubble. The seat of government has been reduced to little more than a platform beneath a towering mango tree outside a police station near the airport.
Parliamentary elections have been indefinitely postponed. Radio programs have become soap boxes for opposition leaders to strike the government while it is down. A nation that had been looking forward to a rare, peaceful transfer of power is now experiencing familiar — albeit faint — rumblings of chaos and coups.
During the greatest disaster Haiti has ever faced, its president has seemed incapable of pulling himself together, much less this deeply divided society.
"What the country has seen since the earthquake is not a leader, but a broken man," said Mirlande Manigat, a former first lady of Haiti who makes no secret of her presidential aspirations. "He's not doing. He's not speaking. He's not acting. He's not moving. And if he's not moving, how's the country supposed to move?"
In the immediate aftermath of the quake, Mr. Préval seemed to wander around in a daze, lapsing into moments of disorientation. The morning after, he sent a taped message to the nation, his only one so far, to a radio station, dispassionately reporting details of the damage and urging listeners, "Kembe," the Creole term for "hold on."
In recent days he has begun to take steps to reassert authority and restore his government, but given Haiti's turbulent and unforgiving politics, the damage may have been done.
Mr. Préval makes no apologies for his low profile. "I don't do politics, O.K.?" he huffed in one recent interview. "My work is to find ways to ease the pain of those suffering, instead of being trailed by journalists to pose for pictures with people who suffer."
He boasts that government workers have cleared the streets of about 170,000 bodies. But with so little else to show for his efforts in the nearly three weeks since the earthquake, few are convinced that Mr. Préval is doing anything at all. Despite a flood of foreign aid, hundreds of thousands of people continue to languish in squalid shelters.
Publicly, the international organizations here emphasize at almost every turn that they are working under Mr. Préval's direction. Privately, United Nations and American officials said they did not believe he was up to the task.
Because of concerns about the government's history of corruption and inefficiency, only a fraction of the aid flowing into Haiti is permitted to pass through government channels.
The disappointment in the president seems most palpable. Judith Marceline, a former nurse who lost everything in the quake but the dirty flowered dress she was wearing Sunday, said that she stood in line for hours to vote for Mr. Préval in 2006. Today she wonders why.
"When he needed us, we went out to support him," she said. "Now that we need him, where is he?"Mr. Préval, like Haiti, is no stranger to crisis. In fact, he rose to power as its antidote. After several volatile decades marked by dictatorships and populist governments, the simple, soft-spoken agronomist appealed to a country looking for a cool technocrat to lower the political temperature.
During his first term in office, from 1996 to 2001, he is credited with building dozens of public schools, putting tens of thousands of people to work and issuing titles to thousands of acres of farmland.
In his second term, which began in 2006, Haiti experienced modest, but hopeful, levels of growth and security.
Political tensions, however, began to flare after Mr. Préval's handpicked electoral council disqualified more than a dozen opposition parties from taking part in this year's elections. The move put Mr. Préval at odds with his old mentor, former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who, even in exile, remains adored by the poor.
Mr. Aristide and other opposition leaders accused Mr. Préval of trying to stack the Parliament so that he could make the constitutional changes necessary to run for a third term.
"The only way to confront Préval's plan is to mobilize the population," Evans Paul, a former presidential candidate, told The Associated Press in early January. "The people have a right to rebel whenever the government is acting antidemocratically."
Since the earthquake, its hand strengthened by government weakness, the opposition has seized on the leadership vacuum as another truncheon to swing at the president.
Slowly it appears that Mr. Préval has gotten the message, many say.
In recent days, he sent his prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, to address a meeting of donors in Montreal. He ordered public works projects outside the capital to get back to work, and children in those areas to return to school.
He appointed a group of government ministers and private-sector leaders to serve as liaisons between his government and the hundreds of international organizations delivering assistance to this country. Most notably, he has begun to stake out a place on the public stage, giving interviews and holding news conferences. On Friday, he spoke at length to reporters at Radio Television Caraibes, outlining his vision for a new, less congested capital, where the government employs people to help clear the rubble and rebuild their own homes.
Responding to criticism of his displays of distress after the earthquake, he said, "Even though I am president, I am human first."
To those who have suggested that the recovery ought to be moving more quickly, he said, "They underestimate the magnitude of the problem."
And when asked for a political forecast, he sounded more hopeful than sure, saying that he would try to push ahead with the presidential election, scheduled for November, as the best way to guarantee political stability.
"I want this to be a new country," he said, waving his hands for emphasis. "I want it to be totally different."
Haiti Added to 'Most Dangerous Paper Routes in the World'
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By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: January 31, 2010
The logistics of distributing any newspaper are daunting, but imagine not knowing, even a few days in advance, where the paper will be printed, who will deliver it, where the readers will be or how much danger they will be in.
Enlarge This Image
Stars and Stripes often has time to prepare for delivery, but a crisis like the Haiti earthquake has unique complications.
Related
Times Topics: Haiti
That is what Stars and Stripes faces in a new military deployment, and helps explain why the first copies did not reach Haiti until Saturday, 11 days after American troops began to arrive there.
War poses its own challenges, like simply reaching deadly areas. Terry Leonard, editorial director of Stars and Stripes, tells of a driver hiding papers under produce to get past a Taliban checkpoint in Afghanistan. "We have some of the most dangerous paper routes in the world," Mr. Leonard said.
But in advance of war, there is usually time to make some arrangements, he said, while in a crisis like the Haiti earthquake, "part of what complicates this is there's no advanced planning."
Stars and Stripes is printed in locations around the world near troop deployments, but not usually in the United States. Haiti's infrastructure is so battered, however, that printing there is not practical, and few of the troops have Internet connections to read online.
Delivery by the Navy was considered impractical, leaving relief flights as the best option.
"We recognize that in the opening days of a crisis of this magnitude, they're not going to substitute blood plasma and food and water with newspapers," Mr. Leonard said. "We're not trying to elbow our way onto these flights."
Once serious planning for delivery began, procedures kept changing along with shifting relief arrangements, said Lt. Col. Autum Whalen of the Air Force, the officer in charge of the logistics.
Plans were made to fly from Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, where many early flights originated; a nearby newspaper was to print the copies. That fell through, and when much of the relief operation shifted to Homestead Joint Air Reserve Base in Florida, so did Stars and Stripes, with arrangements for printing at The Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale.
The delivery will be sparse at first, with 800 to 1,000 copies a day making the trip, for about 12,000 troops in Haiti, Colonel Whalen said, but "we will be looking to increase that as the logistics even out."
Sign In to E-Mail
Reprints
Share
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: January 31, 2010
The logistics of distributing any newspaper are daunting, but imagine not knowing, even a few days in advance, where the paper will be printed, who will deliver it, where the readers will be or how much danger they will be in.
Enlarge This Image
Stars and Stripes often has time to prepare for delivery, but a crisis like the Haiti earthquake has unique complications.
Related
Times Topics: Haiti
That is what Stars and Stripes faces in a new military deployment, and helps explain why the first copies did not reach Haiti until Saturday, 11 days after American troops began to arrive there.
War poses its own challenges, like simply reaching deadly areas. Terry Leonard, editorial director of Stars and Stripes, tells of a driver hiding papers under produce to get past a Taliban checkpoint in Afghanistan. "We have some of the most dangerous paper routes in the world," Mr. Leonard said.
But in advance of war, there is usually time to make some arrangements, he said, while in a crisis like the Haiti earthquake, "part of what complicates this is there's no advanced planning."
Stars and Stripes is printed in locations around the world near troop deployments, but not usually in the United States. Haiti's infrastructure is so battered, however, that printing there is not practical, and few of the troops have Internet connections to read online.
Delivery by the Navy was considered impractical, leaving relief flights as the best option.
"We recognize that in the opening days of a crisis of this magnitude, they're not going to substitute blood plasma and food and water with newspapers," Mr. Leonard said. "We're not trying to elbow our way onto these flights."
Once serious planning for delivery began, procedures kept changing along with shifting relief arrangements, said Lt. Col. Autum Whalen of the Air Force, the officer in charge of the logistics.
Plans were made to fly from Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, where many early flights originated; a nearby newspaper was to print the copies. That fell through, and when much of the relief operation shifted to Homestead Joint Air Reserve Base in Florida, so did Stars and Stripes, with arrangements for printing at The Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale.
The delivery will be sparse at first, with 800 to 1,000 copies a day making the trip, for about 12,000 troops in Haiti, Colonel Whalen said, but "we will be looking to increase that as the logistics even out."
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