20803: (Chamberlain) Poverty in northern Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By PAISLEY DODDS

   CAP-HAITIEN, March 25 (AP) -- Aid workers face a dizzying array of
problems as they struggle to help hundreds of thousands people forgotten in
the heartland of Haiti's uprising, where rebels hold sway and some families
have not eaten for weeks.
   Babies are starving. There's no drinking water, electricity or health
care.
   "Sometimes you're just left to die," said Idoja George, 38, who lives in
a sewage-flooded slum crawling with maggots.
   Poor security makes the task of helping the needy even more arduous.
   "It's frustrating to know you have so many people to help in a situation
that is uncertain and security that is tentative at best," said Ilana
Benady, a spokeswoman for London-based Oxfam. The charity is working to
supply water to several communities in northern Haiti.
   The struggle to exist, traditionally more precarious in Haiti's
deforested, flood-prone and isolated north, has become all the more
challenging since rebels used the region to launch their three-week armed
revolt that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
   More than 300 people died in the rebellion, which ended when Aristide
fled on Feb. 29, but the toll may still climb for northerners who now have
gone for weeks without fresh water, food and basic health care.
   Doctors say babies have become the first victims.
   "Most of the malnourished children we see have gotten to the hospital
too late. Many end up dying," said Dr. Anthony Constant, director of the
region's main hospital in the northern port of Cap-Haitien, a city of
500,000.
   Ten babies died there this month, suffering from malnutrition and
dehydration, Dr. Floride Douyon said Thursday. Two more died Thursday after
being born prematurely.
   By comparison, the hospital recorded only two such deaths in the month
before Feb. 22, when rebels seized the city.
   Because of the unrest, Constant said people still were frighten to
travel to the hospital. That means uncounted deaths in the countryside,
much of which is under the control of armed rebels. A force of 250 French
peacekeepers arrived in area only last week.
   Even for those who make it to the hospital, the lack of electricity and
medicines means help might not be available, Constant said.
   He said the hospital had struggled through the last five weeks, using a
shipment from the International Committee of the Red Cross that arrived a
few days after the rebels.
   "Before the ICRC shipment, we had no medication. Now we have the basics
but it's still not enough," the hospital director said.
   Clean water is a key concern in the north, where the state water company
has not operated for more than a decade.
   Residents rely on dirty wells or springs. Some wait for storms to
collect rainwater. Women and children walk miles to get water, carrying
buckets balanced on their heads.
   Rebels who rose up Feb. 5 in the northern city of Gonaives based their
struggle on the belief that Aristide had failed to deliver on promises to
improve life for Haiti's 8 million people -- among the poorest in the
Western Hemisphere.
   For that reason, many Haitians saw the rebels as saviors and a catalyst
for change.
   As the rebellion expanded, the insurgents blocked two main highways in
the north, preventing food and fuel deliveries and worsening already
desperate conditions.
   "Some residents and schools have gone for five weeks without food," said
World Food Program spokesman Alejandro Chicheri.
   When the rebels took Cap-Haitien, jubilant residents looted the World
Food Program warehouse of 800 tons of food, and rebels did little to stop
them.
   Now, under the protection of those same rebels, as well as French
peacekeepers and police, a new shipment of 1,700 tons of rice, beans,
cooking oil and other staples is expected Friday -- the largest shipment to
the north since the crisis erupted.
   It will help feed more than 181,000 people, Chicheri said, going mainly
to needy families programs at schools where tens of thousands of children
get their only meal of the day.
   But an estimated 268,000 people need food aid in the north, where food
still available is risen in price by 20 to 30 percent.
   ------
   On the Net:
   World Food Program: http://www.wfp.org
   Oxfam: http://www.oxfam.org
   ICRC: http://www.icrc.org