"Haiti Struggles with Humanitarian Disaster in Aftermath of Deadly Storms" -- an interview with Dr. Paul Farmer

Here's an excellent interview from the Democracy Now! website with Dr. Paul Farmer about the aftermath of Hurricanes hitting Haiti.

In Haiti, as many as 1,000 people have died and an estimated one million left homeless after the impoverished country was hit by four major storms and hurricanes in less than a month. We speak to the renowned physician Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, a group that provides free medical care in Haiti. After visiting Gonaives over the weekend, Dr. Farmer wrote, “After 25 years spent working in Haiti and having grown up in Florida, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as painful as what I just witnessed.”

Dr. Paul Farmer, Professor of medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School and is the co-founder of Partners in Health. He is also associate chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. His books include Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor and From Outrage to Courage: Women Taking Action for Health and Justice

In Haiti, a humanitarian disaster is unfolding after the impoverished country was hit by four major storms and hurricanes in less than a month.

As many as 1,000 people have died. An estimated one million Haitians have been left homeless. Rescue groups say they have no access to many interior villages across the southern region or to Gonaives, Haiti’s third-largest city, which has been cut off after a bridge collapsed. Much of Gonaives remains under water. At least 80 percent of the estimated 300,000 residents have been displaced or otherwise affected by the flooding. The city’s population has been stranded for days without food or drinking water. Many are making do sleeping on rooftops, with their animals and furniture, waiting for the water level to drop. Throughout Haiti, bridges, roads, clinics and homes have been washed away.

Dr. Paul Farmer is the co-founder of Partners in Health, a group that provides free medical care in central Haiti. After visiting Gonaives over the weekend, he wrote an urgent appeal for aid supplies to be delivered to Haiti immediately. Dr. Farmer wrote: “After 25 years spent working in Haiti and having grown up in Florida, I can honestly say that I have never seen anything as painful as what I just witnessed in Gonaives.”

Dr. Farmer is renowned in the world of global healthcare, a professor of medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School and the author of several books. He joins us now from Boston, just back from Haiti.Thank you, Amy. Good to be back.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Why don’t you just describe what is happening in Gonaives and how you made it in there?

DR. PAUL FARMER: Well, the situation is perhaps most grave in Gonaives, but unfortunately, the entire country has been affected by these storms—southern Haiti, northern Haiti and even central Haiti, where we’ve never seen flooding before.

As for getting into Gonaives, you know, just—I had heard, even from the air where one could see approaching Port-au-Prince, that the city was under water. I had heard that the—it was not possible to get there. But we just went there in a jeep. Now, Saturday night—there are three main ways into Gonaives: from the north, the south and from the central area of Haiti, where we work. We also work close to Gonaives, a little bit further south on the coast in a town called St. Marc, also badly affected by the storm. But Saturday night, Sunday morning, the way that we got in, the bridge through central—from central Haiti also collapsed. So, although it’s more difficult than ever to get into Gonaives, I’m confident that a determined relief effort could reach all of those people stranded there, since we’re not really specialists in disaster relief and we didn’t have much trouble getting there. In fact, my colleagues there today tell me they intend to go back to Gonaives, and whether that’s by using a small boat or just getting through the—past the collapsed bridge with four-wheel drive vehicles, we’ll see. But I think that what is clear is that people can get into Gonaives with water and food and temporary shelter.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, can you talk, though—just describe the picture of what you saw. What are people saying inside? And where is the Haitian government in all of this?

DR. PAUL FARMER: Well, I’ll take those as two different or three different questions. What I saw was something I had never seen before, except in that same city four years ago, when Tropical Storm Jeanne brushed the northern Haitian coast, never making landfall there, and killing 2,000 people in Gonaives, which is—was the same time, more or less, as Katrina. And it was the city—the downtown of the city, the central area of the city, in water, and I saw huge numbers of people in the streets, but they were all people from Gonaives. Very few—this is Friday—on Saturday, very few people from disaster relief organizations had really reached there.

As for the Haitian government, they were there. Their officials were there. And you may recall that over past few months Haiti has not had a government, because the prime minister was—lost his job because of the food insecurity issue, again, which Haitian governments have little to do with. So it was actually not until Saturday, when the new Haitian government was installed. And on that day, Saturday, we met with the new prime minister. And she spent her first day on the job working on disaster relief. The problem is, the Haitian government and the Haitian state have been so hollowed out over the last several years that they really don’t have the resources that they need. But the people in charge of responding, the doctors and disaster relief employees and the volunteers, they were there in the city doing what they could with what they had. The problem is, they just don’t have anything.

And so, that leads to the third part of your question: how do the people feel? Well, you know, they’re angry, and they’re upset, and they’re frightened. And they’ve lost their property. And many of them have lost family members. And they’re still stranded on top of these ramshackle buildings. And in one house, for example, there were about a hundred people crowded into one single-family dwelling on top of the roof and, you know, in the dryer parts of the house. And you could see that all over the center of the city. So, again, getting food and water and medicines to the people inside that area and also to those who have been pushed further south towards places like the ones in which we work or into the center of Haiti is going to be an urgent—it is an urgent, has been urgent, and also feasible.

Read the entire interview here.