News from Haiti: September 2008

Hurricane Relief Efforts

From September 1 to September 9 2008, Haiti endured a tragedy. Three of the four hurricanes that hit Haiti, destroyed every household in almost all of the 10 departments of the country and the entire food supply. This catastrophe caused extremely high water pollution. To overcome this epidemic, AME-SADA the humanitarian relief and development entity of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, asked International Action in treating some of the polluted water supplies. On the first day the team treated nine wells in Cabaret. This effort provided a dozen families with safe drinking water.

On September 8, International Action donated chlorine tablets to the UN, the only organization that had limited access to Gonaives, the town that suffered the most damage. Each tablet can treat thousands of gallons of water.

After the wake of the storms, and as the people of Haiti are beginning to put their lives back together, our staff has been working hard on the hurricane relief, visiting all of our sites to check on the systems, fixing the ones that had suffered damages, but also providing the populations and other fellow NGOs with chlorine tablets. These tablets if dragged through the water in a nylon bag, five minutes for 500 gallons, will have the same effect as our chlorinator and can insure clean water for the people.

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