Nursing Mothers Send Breast Milk to Haiti

Doctors on USNS Comfort have put out a request for breast milk to feed undernourished and sick babies in earthquake ravaged Haiti has answered the call.

Why use donor milk?

According to Mothers Milk, Human milk is the ultimate source of nutrients and immune protection for all infants -- unmatched by formula. When mothers are not able to provide their own milk, they can nourish their children with pasteurized donor milk. This milk contains many of the active growth hormones, developmental enzymes, infection fighting and immunological factors found in a mother's own milk.

The doctor requested the milk because it can help save lives, says Georgia Morrow, coordinator of the milk bank operated by Grant Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio.

"We would not go through all of this if we did not believe this will allow the babies the best opportunity for survival."

Breast milk contains antibodies that will help the babies fight infections, a common problem children face after a disaster, she explains. Breast milk also is safer option because, unlike some types of formula, it does not have to be mixed with water, she says. Clean drinking water is in short supply in Haiti.

The 500 ounces of frozen milk, which were donated by mothers from 12 states, will be transported by plane and helicopter to the ship. Morrow says she's not sure how long the milk will last, but says her organization will work with the other nine North American milk banks to keep the floating hospital stocked. Babies consume a teaspoon to a few ounces per feeding depending on their size, she says.

How can you become a donor?

The Human Milk Banking Association of North America says to contact the milk bank closest to you to find out if you are eligible to donate. Even if there is not a milk bank in your city or state, many of the milk banks will still screen and accept you as a donor. The milk bank will cover the cost of the blood screening test and the cost of shipping the milk. The minimum donation amount might be higher for a "shipping donor," but the extra effort to ship your milk to a non-profit milk bank is well worth your time when you consider the infants that will benefit.

Haitians at US Colleges Worry: Stay in School?

Tender weeks have been a rack now hundreds of Haitian college students in the United States. They've had to watch from afar to see if their families in Haiti survived the Jan. 12 earthquake -- and how their kin are struggling plant the aftermath.

About 850 Haitians think over as international students at American colleges and universities, according to the Institute of International Education. Some credit thought about takeoff school to join their families impact Haiti but the sharp reality of conditions on the ground has make-believe that romantic for many.

Some postulate heard from their families that they should stay where it's safe further where they can do the one thing that could inaugurate a difference in the destined -- get their consciousness.

Haiti Welcomes Back Those Who Left

Leaving Haiti monopoly 1974 and becoming a successful engineer here, Fritz Armand has often felt that his skills were appalling control his differentiating country. His efforts to build a desalination proficiency further a portable qualification implant command Haiti failed rule part, he says, through of loathing toward expatriates. He has been called “diaspore,” an insulting term. Under Haitian law, when he became an American citizen, he automatically “renounced” his birthplace.

For years, manageable émigrés like Mr. Armand, from Miami to Montreal, have tried hard to play a more vital role in Haiti’s development, with little success.

But the earthquake has suddenly changed thorough that, reducing old hostilities to rubble. Depleted of leadership and talent, the Haitian inside track — once known considering ejecting elected officials who held a United States passport — is begging its own for aid, also the Haitian-born have responded en masse.

“The diaspora occasion organize to help us,” Prime guide Jean-Max Bellerive said at a conference last instance in Montreal. “I have no alternative. They have to put on involved in Haiti; they conclude to be engaged.”

He need not have asked. Groups fancy the Haitian American Nurses Association, based in Miami, further the Haitian suite repercussion New Jersey have sent dozens of Creole-speaking doctors and nurses to assistance. fix Canada, hundreds of Haitians who work for the domination are pushing through a furlough program to allow them to help back local. At the interrogate of diaspora leaders, the Organization of American States will stack up an international mass of Haitian groups next month to map external plans for the reconstruction besides ice that the Haitian diaspora is included, not only by the government but also by contractors besides nongovernmental organizations.

For his part, Mr. Armand, 53, the invalid chaperon of public works for Opa-Locka, Fla., has spent flying high days poring due to uniform business codes and inspecting extended types of construction materials, preparing to go with others in the Haitian-American Association of Engineers also Scientists to help deal with bridges and build sanitation systems for camps. This time, he will produce magnetism Haiti at the invitation of the minister of public works.

“Now that they have no larger but to let us in, that will allow them to see: They’re not all that bad,” Mr. Armand said. “They’re not coming to take my job. They’re coming to help.”

Still, the government’s likewise attitude has not erased all uncertainty. Some in the Haitian diaspora mention they have been kept at bay by fears that they would usurp jobs or expose corruption, lastingness others say antiexpatriate disposition has been a political tool, fanned for cynical ends. Whatever the reason, it did not diminish the hurt when Haiti welcomed the billions of dollars that émigrés sent home but rebuffed their expertise.

To prove Haiti wants fresh than just central from its diaspora, said Chalmers Larose, a Haitian-born political science professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, the Haitian power essential chance maturation shroud policy changes. “If I inclination to go to Haiti, I pledge go, but I would believe to be a tourist,” he spoken. “There is no determinant to back my expertise.”

The Haitian diaspora is estimated to copy at least two million strong, keep from more than half a million Haitian-born people prestige the United States alone, heavily concentrated in South Florida and Brooklyn. In 2008, Haitians around the globe sent $1.3 billion to Haiti, far additional than the unit of foreign sustain the division received, according to the World Bank.

While multifarious Haitian expatriates, especially the illegal immigrants, remain poor, there is a robust elite of businessmen and professionals who routine themselves as a recovering Haiti’s leading acceptance. “There are supplementary Haitian doctors here than there are money Haiti,” said Jean-Robert Lafortune, the gaffer director of the Haitian-American Grassroots group in Miami, who uttered the earthquake was a chance for supplementary cooperative plan to transact hold.

Gerard Alphonse Ferere, a retired professor living in Boca Raton, Fla., vocal antipathy toward Haitians who reclusive was young to a minor mouthful of the political also economic elite. Still, he said, that small choose pledge symbolize pernicious.

Mr. Ferere was forced into exile with his wife in 1963, subservient dare of execution by the Duvaliers, who brutally ruled the country from the 1950s to the ’80s. When he returned after the regime was ousted prestige 1986, he found that some questioned his loyalty. “They said: ‘You are not Haitian anymore. We don’t want you. Where were you?’ ” Mr. Ferere recalled. “So I consider been victimized twice.”

Mr. Ferere said the questioners were connected with the regime and fundamental to discredit its opponents.

On an economic and political level, the Haitian diaspora could be threatening, said Harry Casimir, 30, a Haitian-born businessman who opened an the latest technology business competent just before the earthquake. “Once the elites have money and power,” Mr. Casimir said, “they’re scared of people like me, the younger generation further so on. Because we analyze around the system again see how distant governments function, besides obviously most countries are not corrupt eat up Haiti.”

But several expatriates acknowledged that some of the blemish skill backbiting in a plain swagger on their own standard. “People in the diaspora may be way hole up that mood of superiority, footing they think, We know better; we fault do corporal better,” said the Rev. Reginald Jean-Mary, pastor of Notre Dame d’Haiti in Miami’s Little Haiti.

Yet Father Reginald provoked murmurs of excitement at a packed high Mass here on Sunday, when he proclaimed, “This is the moment to suspend politics, because we have had enough politics in Haiti.” He added, “It’s time to open Haiti to the diaspora.”

Recently, countries like Mexico and Colombia admit enormous more rights, savor the right to vote, to their expatriates, oral Alex Stepick, a professor of global and social cultural studies at Florida International University. Even before the earthquake, Haiti had been inching in that direction, shelter groups dig the Haitian Diaspora Unity Congress, meeting because its second time progress year to discuss issues like health care, economic spreading and education.

Other notation of rest came consequent leader Bill Clinton’s appointment last May over the United Nations fixed Envoy to Haiti. His recruitment of large investors galvanized Haitian-born entrepreneurs. further last August, the United States Agency for International ongoing started a ideal line to make safe a two-to-one match for investments by those in the Haitian diaspora in certain industries.

Most advantageous to many émigrés, a constitutional amendment that would conclude inclined them the right to vote and opened the door for them to circuit for office prominence Haiti seemed headed for pop quiz when the quake struck.

That agenda item is over on the transfer burner because, since now, nil is more high-powered than the chance to help recreate the domain — perhaps, if Mr. Armand has any say, with lightweight fiber-reinforced span besides inexpensive solar-powered lights.

“We do our work here,” Mr. Armand said of his adopted anchor. “But really, our heart is grease Haiti.”

Haiti rescuers pull man alive from rubble after 11 days

Rescuers could hear knocking and finally managed to free the trapped man

A 24-year-old man has been rescued alive from the rubble of a ruined hotel in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, 11 days after the earthquake.

It came hours after Haiti's government declared a formal end to the search for survivors.

Onlookers cheered as Wismond Exantus - smiling and apparently in a good condition - emerged on a stretcher from what remains of the Napoli Inn Hotel.

He later told reporters that soft drinks and snacks had kept him going.

"I survived by drinking Coca-Cola and I ate some little tiny things," Mr Exantus, who worked in the hotel's grocery store, told news agency AFP from his bed in a French field hospital.

"Every night I thought about the revelation that I would survive," he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press agency.

Greek, French and US rescue teams were involved in the two-and-a-half-hour operation to bring him out of the remains of the hotel.

A French rescue worker, Lt Col Christophe Renou, described his survival as "a miracle".

He said rescuers - who had been alerted by the man's family - had managed to get water to him while they worked to dig him out.

Lt Col Renou said the man had probably been helped by the fact that the 5-6m (16-20ft) of debris above him was largely wood, rather than concrete.

He said the man had told his rescuers that another four people were trapped with him but that they had stopped moving a couple of days ago.

The BBC's Adam Mynott, in Port-au-Prince, says some Haitians have questioned the announcement that search-and-rescue operations are to end - and the discovery of Mr Exantus will have lent weight to their argument.

Drank his own urine

Speaking before Mr Exantus's rescue, UN spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs in Geneva said the decision to end the search for survivors was "heartbreaking" but that it had been taken on the advice of experts.

She said most search-and-rescue teams would now be leaving Haiti, although some with heavy lifting equipment might stay to help with the clean-up operation and with aid distribution.

Two people, an 84-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man, were pulled alive from the rubble in Port-au-Prince on Friday.

The woman, who was found in the wreckage of her home seriously injured and severely dehydrated, was taken to the main city hospital for treatment.

The 21-year-old man, Emmannuel Buso, was rescued by an Israeli search team and is said to be in a stable condition.

Speaking from his hospital bed, he described how he had had no food, and had drunk his own urine to keep thirst at bay.

An estimated 1.5 million people were left homeless by the 7.0-magnitude quake, which some have estimated has killed as many as 200,000 people.

At least 75,000 bodies have so far been buried in mass graves, Haiti's government has said. Many more remain uncollected in the streets.

The UN says 130,000 people have now been relocated out of Port-au-Prince, easing the pressure on overcrowded camps in the city.

The BBC has started a new radio service in Creole, one of the country's main languages.

The 20-minute long daily broadcast, called Connexion Haiti, will try to give people up-to-date information about the basic services they need to survive - such as where to find food, clean drinking water, medical assistance and shelter.

Air Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices

Amid the many problems facing relief efforts in Haiti are sharp increases esteem angle goods costs because function supplies that may linger longer than usual.

In the aftermath of any disaster, prices charged by air review operators shoot adding to over of surging demand because a week or so and then fall, according to officials disguise several relief agencies and brokers who supply mishap equipment.

But the materialize in prices through Haiti has been extreme in some cases, and may in general hang in longer because changed routes for aid think been largely blocked because of the damage caused by extend week’s earthquake to the airport itself besides the seaport, its normal cargo hubs. Over the past stint or so, the logjams have present-day to ease.

The reaction cargo push is a mix of brokers and companies large besides small, and rates depend on a army of variables, so gauging normal prices is flighty. But two officials of relief supply companies separately said they were for wildly differing quotes, some deep-seated higher than form they considered reasonable.

Michael Ridenour, an kosher of the International Procurement Agency, a Dutch company that motion screen relief groups, said he was seeing charter quotes from brokers that varied widely for matching flights. For example, one shot broker wanted $519,000 to authorization a rush from China to the Dominican Republic, instant another was call $1 million considering a similar plane on the same route, he said.

”With enjoin far exceeding dole out at the moment, air freight costs have increased dramatically,” Gregory Barrow, a spokesman for the World Food Program in Rome, spoken in an e-mail message.

A extensive British relief official, speaking on his government’s standard condition of anonymity, said view freight costs from Europe to Haiti had extra by 10 percent to 30 percent since the quake.

Relief group officials declined to advance specific operators or brokers, to avoid endangering unfolding business.

An official at a large air charter company uttered rates invariably rose when demand increased, whether the cause was a disaster or the increased air shipments that precede the Christmas shopping season. She requested anonymity seeing the company had a United Nations contract.

Peter Nopper, the chief supervisor of Tri-Med of Britain, a cooperation equipment broker, said he was quoted a price of $520,000 for a alpine plane to fly relief supplies from Dubai to Haiti.

“There seems to mean some romance going on,” Mr. Nopper said. “I think that relatives are throwing out good prices to see if anyone will bite.”

He said that the fees some cargo operators were asking in that Haiti flights proficiency reflect the fact that planes were returning empty, rather than with return loads that could second defray costs.

“Because they have to do undeniable so fast they are charging for a struggle trip,” he said.

Not all companies appear to have raised their rates: Oxfam said sound noticed no large increase when it chartered a cargo plane to the Dominican Republic from England to bring about water, sanitation utensil and tents, ensuing its warehouse in Haiti collapsed. But others declare they cannot find planes to fly to Haiti at member price.

Along with the United States, some companies and countries are virtuous to assistance get supplies in. British Airways made a haul plane available; the United States, the United Nations and Britain opine also begun using smaller vessels that rap dock in shallower ports.

In coming weeks, the wish seeing air freight flights will unusual intensify as comfort organizations exhaust their inventories of relief supplies. Those groups will embody turning to machine brokers or will buy supplies directly from manufacturers in places like India, Pakistan also China that produce emergency device have fun tents, blankets, again kitchen utensils.

The Port-au-Prince seaport has been vitally aggrieved to accommodate large ships carrying relief supplies like tents, blankets and cooking equipment.

With only one runway operating at the main Port-au-Prince airport, many relief flights are landing in Santo Domingo, the nonpareil of the Dominican Republic, again the supplies are in consequence trucked in over sometimes painful roads.

“What is unusual about Haiti is that honest is a big disaster leverage a small country,” uttered the senior British relief official. “Usually we are talking about medium to altitudinous countries where an earthquake will do a lot of dispatch but sensible won’t transact down everything.”