The Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid – IsraAID – is sending a team to Haiti Thursday night to check the progress of its work on that quake-struck island.
Since January 16 – four days after an earthquake rocked Haiti, destroying much of the infrastructure in the island's capital city of Port-au-Prince – Israeli medical professionals and others have worked to help local residents recover from the disaster.
Now a cholera outbreak is threatening the city and its surrounding communities. Thus far, some 200 people have already succumbed to the epidemic.
The IsraAID medical staff has been meeting with United Nations personnel to discuss the impact of the cholera outbreak on associated programs in the region, including those of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development (NISPED) and Tevel B'Tzedek.
From Haiti, the team will travel to New Orleans to participate in the upcoming Jewish General Assembly, where IsraAid will present a unique exhibit of an IDF field hospital tent used during this year's crisis in Haiti. The tent was later donated to IsraAid by the IDF, which transformed it into the first official school operating in the camps of Port-au-Prince.
Participants at the Jewish General Assembly will have the opportunity to see drawings, photos and videos of the Israeli operation in Haiti.
Services provided over the past 10 months to the island population by the IsraAid staff, beyond the basic emergency medical care, included primary family medical care, medical rehabilitation, informal education, food production, women empowerment and children's safe-space programs.