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Wednesday, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) expressed regret that a plane carrying 12 tons of vital medical equipment has been prevented from landing on three occasions in Port-au-Prince since Sunday evening.
Huffington Post

In Haiti, No One In Charge

Some really questionable decisions were made. Doctors Without Borders which had established clinics in Haiti years before the quake, dispatched a portable, inflatable hospital surgery unit carried in two planes. One was allowed to land in Haiti, the other was forced to land in the Dominican Republic resulting in two lost days before it was made operational.

On Thursday night, Belgian relief chief coordinator Geert Gijs ordered a surgical team evacuated from a makeshift hospital leaving just operated victims abandoned because of security reasons.

For all the valid reasons we heard during the chaos on why water, food and medical supplies were not delivered to the horror-stricken, injured, thirsty and hungry victims, one country excelled.

That, of course, was Israel. Hours after landing, they established a fully equipped field hospital and performed dozens of surgeries. A second team was dispatched Monday night and was operational by midday today.

The IsraAID/FIRST medical teams consisting of 12 medical personnel treated some 200 people, performed 25 surgeries and delivered.three babies in its first day.

The U.S., in particular FEMA, should use Israel as a model. It is a lean, mean, surgical task force with years of practical experience.

The U.S., by comparison, is a bumbling, fumbling giant funneling a wealth of resources too often unable or incapable of being logistically delivered in a timely fashion. It occurred in New Orleans after the Katrina hurricane and we see the same logistical blockage in Haiti.

It is not a case of “helluva job Brownie.” It is a case of lack of leadership on the ground. Where is the general or admiral to kick butt and take names and get the job done.

Isabelle Jeanson, a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Emergency Communications Officer, wrote in an email from Haiti on Sunday: “MSF is still concerned that delivery of vital supplies is being delayed.”

“Patients who were not critical only three days ago are now in critical phases. This means that people will die from preventable infections. It’s horrible. It’s really so terrible that people are begging for help and we can’t help them all to save their lives!”

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper called it “stupid deaths.”

http://themoderatevoice.com/59921/in-ha ... in-charge/

"Seeing Everything as Flat":
Landscape in Gertrude Stein's
Useful Knowledge and The
Geographical History of America

If nobody had to die how would there be room for any of us who now live to have lived. We never could have been if all the others had not died. There would have been no room.

In every country there is some way in which it is not right to be dead, that is to die. And why. Each one knows why.

Samaritrophia, "hysterical indifference to the troubles of those less fortunate than oneself." God Bless You Mr Rosewater