News Roundup of Adventists and Haiti Recovery

The USA Today writes:

Carrefour, once a crossroads for rice-planting villages near the sea, is now the site of a huge tent city at Adventist University Haiti with thousands of people.

Wally Amundson, director of Adventist Development and Relief Agency’s inter-American division, began the biscuit distribution process days ago when he told the WFP that his agency could help get food into the right hands. At 7 a.m. Monday, he and staffers made the 40-minute drive to the U.N. compound near the Port-au-Prince airport to get the biscuits.

Helicopters swarmed overhead. Massive cargo planes jostled for space on the crowded taxiway. Pallets of water and food sat stacked off the tarmac where soldiers loaded it onto trucks and helicopters.

The relief workers spent two hours locating the biscuits — a U.N. worker couldn’t find the trucks — and the right WFP people to authorize the transfer.

Just before 10 a.m., Amundson claimed his trucks. “The trucks are loaded. … The engines are running,” he said. “We’re just waiting for authorization.

The Adventist News Network reports:

Water is at a premium,” said Raymond Chevalier, an ADRA employee currently helping to coordinate relief work in Haiti. “In the following days, we expect civil unrest to grow — especially in some of the overcrowded areas where people have sought shelter — unless an abundant supply of water and other forms of aid are quickly made available to them.

Global Medic, an emergency response team working with ADRA in Haiti, will distribute over 2 million water purification tablets in the next few days. The group’s doctor and paramedics are providing assistance to the injured, performing amputations and other emergency procedures.

. . .

A Loma Linda University medical team, as well as physicians from the Caribbean island of Martinique, is scheduled to arrive early this week to aid the understaffed and overworked doctors, said Elie Honore, health ministries director for the church in Inter-America. Honore, a physician, is coordinating Adventist medical teams going into Haiti.

Leaders for the Adventist Church in Inter-America said the death toll among church members is still uncertain.

Reuters adds in a caption:

Edline Cothiere, a nurse with one of CARE Haiti’s local partners, explains how to use water purification packets that CARE is distributing at the Adventist Auditorium in Port-au-Prince. CARE distributed enough packets to clean water for 600 displaced people staying at the church compound.

And the Poughkeepsie Journal writes:

Approximately 300 Haitian families live in the Poughkeepsie area, and the Mid-Hudson French Seventh-Day Adventist Church has been a focal point for people to come to pray, to offer support and to exchange information.

The Adventist Medical Center in Portland, Ore., is teaming up with the World Health Organization in, “asking for human breast milk donations to be sent to Adventist Medical Center’s breast milk donor depot to aide young victims of the Haiti earthquake. Human milk is vital to improving the health of premature and sick children. . . . In the case of premature and sick children, human milk is particularly critical to improving health outcomes,” said Peggy Andrews, registered nurse and lactation consultant at Adventist Medical Center. “There is a critical shortage of breast milk in the United States and especially in Haiti; any donations of viable breast milk are appreciated.”

Pacific Union College student Tim Wolfer writes to Spectrum:

Things are bad. And as they clean up it gets worse because they are running out of food. I am staying at an orphanage that has been on CNN and Fox the last 3 days. They are trying to air evacuate them out. Things are not as violent as they make them to be, but it’s not a place for a “mission group”. They need more doctors and relief workers. The bright side is that they are cleaning the streets as fast as they can and every one is pitching in with that.

And finally, the Loma Linda University medical team is now on the ground in Haiti. The most recent arrivals include: Jeff Douglass Cure Intl., Dave Mitchell SOS Children’s Villages, Dr. Mike Fishell LLU , Andrew Haglund LLU, Dr. Brad Walter Cure Intl., Chris Vannucci LLU

(Image at top: Dr. Scott Nelson heading to surgery in Port-au-Prince.) See more pictures here.