Haitian Radio Returns to the Air

"'We try and orient people to where aid is being distributed, and every day we announce messages about people who are still missing,' says Wendell Theodore, the silken-voiced news director of Radio Metropole in the capital's Delmas region. His own home destroyed, Theodore now broadcasts the names of the missing from under a tree in the radio station's yard, next to the tent he has slept in since his house collapsed.

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Francois now spends his days combing the capital, trying to paint an audio picture of what is happening and to get information on the air about where aid is being distributed, the location of feeding and medical centers, and other important information. Many of the station's employees, fearful of aftershocks, refuse to enter the building."

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Haiti Hospital’s Fight Against TB Falls to One Man

From the article:

"In normal times, Haiti sees about 30,000 new cases of tuberculosis each year. Among infectious diseases, it is the country’s second most common killer, after AIDS, according to the World Health Organization.

The situation has gone from bad to worse because the earthquake set off a dangerous diaspora. Most of the sanatorium’s several hundred surviving patients fled and are now living in the densely packed tent cities where experts say they are probably spreading the disease. Most of these patients have also stopped taking their daily regimen of pills, thereby heightening the chance that there will be an outbreak of a strain resistant to treatment, experts say."

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Bill Clinton, in Haiti, Emphasizes Urgent Need for Sanitation and Health Care

From the article:

"Dr. Paul Farmer, the deputy special envoy to Haiti who toured the clinic with Mr. Clinton, said: 'For sanitation and health, the key is going to be to create community-based solutions, which basically means hire Haitians and lots of them to begin tracking infectious diseases, doing follow-up on treatments, as well as building latrines and water infrastructure. It shouldn’t be seen as some radical notion that we need to inject the money into the Haitian population, because they are the ones who can actually do the follow up.'"