Haiti earthquake: Aid effort shifts to long-term care

But the reality is that many neighborhoods will have to be razed and completely rebuilt, officials say, and they add that such major construction cannot occur with people living in close proximity.

'Clusters' improve aid delivery

Officials and some nongovernmental experts say the coordination of the dizzying number and variety of aid providers responding to Haiti’s crisis is an improvement over past experiences. And they credit a number of recent international disaster assistance measures that they say have streamlined intervention and made it more efficient – including a new United Nations-administered “cluster system” for organizing aid providers around certain critical tasks like rescue or infrastructure.

“I really think the operation is moving pretty well, especially given the magnitude of the damage and the density of the population in this case, and I think we can credit the organizing system now in place,” says Jens Kristensen, the senior humanitarian officer with the UN’s stabilization mission (MINUSTAH) in Haiti.

Mr. Kristensen, who survived five days buried in the rubble of the UN’s Port-au-Prince building, says the “cluster” system – assigning one international agency to coordinate the efforts around a particular task – has “streamlined the process of bringing organizations together, cut down on duplication of effort, and made for a system that is more predictable.”

Bright spots

Despite the immensity of the human suffering, officials say there are some bright spots that will help in the weeks ahead.

Larsen says Haiti’s public health system was not wiped out and is already back administering programs in vaccinations, tuberculosis prevention, and HIV/AIDS. And Health and Human Services’ Sizemore says Haiti’s agriculture, long neglected, could be an engine in the recovery.

Noting that this disaster was not like a hurricane, which can wipe out crops and result in massive erosion, he says, “It appears the agricultural infrastructure is intact, and that’s going to be a big help” in the rebuilding phase.

Johanna Mendelson Forman, a Latin America expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says a “re-dedication to agriculture” would allow Haitians to grow more of their own food, “creating a more secure future.” But she says first will have to come “decentralization away from the capital, construction of new infrastructure, roads, and distributive energy systems to end rural isolation.”

Getting corruption in check will also be high on donors’ minds, Ms. Mendelson Forman says. She notes the recent calls for creation of a “Haiti fund” – modeled after a similar fund created after Central America’s hurricane Mitch disaster -- that would be jointly managed by Haitian government leaders and members of the international community.

The rescue and emergency assistance phase in Haiti may have just about wrapped up in two weeks, but disaster experts say that food and water distribution will go on for at least another six months to a year, and that rebuilding could be a decade’s project.

Build On’s Badenoch, now constructing latrines at a camp that sprouted on the grounds of a Silesian Order’s church in Port-au-Prince, says the priest in charge seemed overwhelmed when he told him the camp might be at his church for a year or more.

“I too would like to get back right now to doing what we do best, which is building schools, but suddenly there are these new priorities that really have to be taken care of first,” he says. “Rebuilding after this is going to take a long time.”

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