Haiti: water and medicine in short supply
Updated on 17 January 2010
The Haitian city of Port-au-Prince is still crying out for clean water and medical supplies but aid is beginning to trickle in.
Delivering the aid is proving a major challenge.
Although the Americans are now in charge of the airport, aid groups say vital cargo flights are being turned away and there are sporadic reports of looting among the ever more desperate survivors.
Logistical logjams have kept major relief from reaching the hundreds of thousands of hungry Haitians waiting for help, many of them sheltering in makeshift camps on streets strewn with debris and decomposing bodies.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: "I'm going there with a very heavy heart. This is one of the worst humanitarian crises in decades. The damage, destruction, loss of life is just overwhelming.
The United Nations was feeding 40,000 people a day and hoped to increase that to 1 million within two weeks, he said. "The challenge at this time is how to coordinate all of this outpouring of assistance."
As people turned more desperate and in the widespread absence of authority, looters swarmed over collapsed stores carrying out food and anything else they could find.
Fighting broke out between groups carrying knives, ice-picks, hammers and rocks.
Some thieves have been lynched by mobs or shot by men claiming to be plainclothes police.
Teacher Eddy Toussaint said: "Haitians are partly taking things into their own hands. There are no jails, the criminals are running free, there are no authorities controlling this."
Many Haitians have streamed out of the city on foot with suitcases on their heads or jammed in cars to find food and shelter in the countryside.
Others have crowded the airport hoping to get on planes that arrived laden with emergency supplies and left packed with Haitians.
The shell-shocked government has given the US military control over the tiny airport to guide aid flights from around the world.
Dozens of nations have sent planes with rescue teams, doctors, field hospitals, food, medicine and other supplies, but faced a bottleneck at the airport, where fuel was in short supply.
Some groups complained that their flights had been diverted to the neighboring Dominican Republic, forcing them to carry emergency supplies into Haiti overland.