PAHO aids relief efforts in Caribbean

Disaster experts from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) are working with other international and local agencies to carry out relief efforts in nine Caribbean countries affected by hurricanes and tropical storms that swept through the region in recent weeks.

A record-setting North Atlantic hurricane season so far has left more than 500 dead and tens of thousands affected throughout the region.

PAHO has mobilized teams of disaster coordinators, physicians, sanitary and civil engineers, health systems experts, and relief supply management personnel to the Bahamas, Barbados, the Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica. Staff already stationed in Cuba and Panama were deployed there.

The organization also has appealed for international aid and is coordinating shipments of vital supplies through its Humanitarian Supply Management System (SUMA). Canada, the European Commission, the United Kingdom and the United States have provided emergency support for PAHO’s efforts.

Reports today from a PAHO team in Haiti indicate that at least 500 Haitians were killed in flooding after Tropical Storm Jeanne dumped up to 16 inches of rain on the island of Hispaniola this past weekend. More than 100,000 residents of the northern cities of Gonaives and Port de Paix were in need of food, water, shelter and medication after severe flooding. Some 500 flood victims are currently in the morgue at Gonaives' main hospital, with survivors being treated elsewhere. The floods destroyed 75 percent of a United Nations Stabilization Mission encampment in the area, uprooting 450 foreign peacekeepers.