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By CHARLES J. HANLEY (AP) – 12 hours ago

Tons of rice and beans tell how the world is helping Haiti. Missing tents, tarps and toilets show how it is falling short.

Amid the misery, experts already are looking for lessons from the Haiti catastrophe — in time, they hope, for the next nightmare. Some voices call for an international humanitarian force to take charge in future emergencies.

Haiti’s Jan. 12 earthquake has tested man’s humanity to man more than any natural calamity in modern memory, challenging the ability of the community of nations and its global emergency network to meet an unprecedented volume of demands for food, water, medical help and shelter.

“This is a major test for all of us and we cannot afford to fail,” U.N. humanitarian coordinator John Holmes told aid groups after his latest visit to the crippled Caribbean nation.

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From NYTimes.com

By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Published: February 28, 2010

There were floods on Saturday in Les Cayes, in southwestern Haiti. It rained in Port-au-Prince on Thursday, and again on Saturday and Sunday night, long enough to slick the streets and make a slurry of the dirt and concrete dust. Long enough, too, to give a sense of what will happen across the country in a few weeks, when the real storms start.

Mud will wash down the mountains, and rain will overflow gutters choked with rubble and waste, turning streets into filthy rivers. Life will get even more difficult for more than a million people.

New misery and sickness will drench the displaced survivors of the Jan. 12 earthquake — like the 16,000 or so whose tents and flimsy shacks fill every available inch of the Champ de Mars, the plaza in Port-au-Prince by the cracked and crumbled National Palace, or the 70,000 who have made a city of the Petionville Club, a nine-hole golf course on a mountainside above the capital.

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Its been a while since I have written on the blog.  If you dont know me, my name is Steve Henrichon and I am the RMF Country Director for Peru.  Things got a little hectic for me this past year as I started my first year of medical school at UC Davis School of Medicine.  Its been a challenge juggling school work and staying involved with RMF and with the clinic in Peru, but now with my first semester behind me, I am finding it easier to balance that which is important to me.  Speaking of balancing my life, I am recently engaged and my fiance, Sara, and I are busy planning a September wedding.  Sooooo…now when I am not memorizing the adverse side effects of Class 3 antibiotics, or pondering what color flowers to have  for the wedding, or sitting on the couch with Sara watching American Idol, I am busy directing the Policlinico Peruano Americano, our RMF clinic in Peru.  Feel free to check the RMF website for the latest monthly reports from Peru.  By the way, we celebrated the clinic’s 2 year anniversary on December 10, 2009.  The clinic staff celebrated the occasion with a Pisco Sour toast (after hours of course).

Here’s a touching story.  Towards the end of January, the clinic staff took the initiative to hold a fundraiser to benefit the victims of the Haiti earthquake.  They charged 5 Sol for entrance to the event, which is the equivalent of about $1.35.  They raised $300.  Magali, the Administrative Director at the clinic, asked for us to deduct the $300 from their monthly budget and instead use the money for our operation in Haiti.  This gesture brought a tear to my eye.  After suffering through an 8.0 earthquake in 2007, the people from Pisco are all too familiar with the horror and despair that comes in the wake of such a disaster.  They didnt hesitate when an opportunity arose to open their wallets to help the Haitians.  $300 in Peru is a lot of money!  Anyways, this gesture is a testament to the empathy and kindness of the Pisquenos.  I have to admit, that I have a great feeling of pride for our clinic staff.

Steve

THE HINDU

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

The Asian Legal Resource Center (ALRC), a human rights organization with a General Consultative status with the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council, has pointed out conditions of mass deprivation, especially hunger, malnutrition and distress migration, in Madhya Pradesh in its country report on India to the UN Human Rights Council.

The report, expressing concerns over the right to food situation in India, points out the shocking state of affairs in Madhya Pradesh regarding several human development indicators, especially malnutrition among tribals.

According to the report, Madhya Pradesh carries a disturbing tag of being one of the biggest contributors to neo-natal and child mortality in the world. Laying special emphasis on tribal communities, the report states that the mortality rate among children under the age of five in the state’s tribal community is far higher than the state and national average.

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“…these little scraps of paper are like diamonds.”

“…’One day at a time,’ she sings, ‘One day at a time”‘

Haiti: One Month on (BBC Video)

BBC.com
Monday, 15 February 2010
A month on from the Haiti earthquake and the government says the death toll may have reached 230,000.
The relief effort has been hindered by severe damage to roads and communications and now the country is facing the start of the rainy season.
In Leogane, the epicentre of the quake, west of Port-au-Prince, 90% of the buildings are in ruins or will need to be rebuilt.
Christian Fraser has been to the town to see how people are coping.

The Real Medicine clinic opened on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010. On opening day we saw 166 patients and by the second day that number grew to well over 200.

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The Highs and Lows of One Child at a Time

One of RMF’s guiding principles is that we approach our work “one child at a time”, focusing on individuals, real impacts and tangible results even as we implement large-scale, projects affecting millions of people. This approach, while effective, is never easy. We get attached. This past month, I’ve been reminded of how rewarding one child at a time can be and also of how painful.

I met Abishek, aged 7, one night last December at Real Medicine’s office in Jhabua. I was cranky for spending a late-night in the office sorting through expenses when Jimmy, our project coordinator, brought in a boy and his father who had heard about RMF and wanted to see if we could help them. Even in the dim light I could tell that Abishek was not well. His bony hand clung around his father’s neck as his father told me about Abishek’s battle with cancer and hospitals and the family’s battle with debt and mistreatment. Abishek had been diagnosed with a Wilms tumor, a form of cancer not necessarily fatal in the West, if caught early, but which was already in the late stages because of the poor rural medical system in Jhabua. As Abishek started to get really sick and his stomach began to swell drastically, he and his family were bounced around from hospital to hospital, his treatment being ever referred, deferred, by doctors unable to tell the seriousness of his condition. He finally ended up at a private hospital in Indore where the hospital charged his family obscene amounts of money (which they had to borrow from money lenders to cover) and performed a surgery that another later doctor told me was a butcher’s job. It is suspected, and highly probably given this hospital’s reputation, that the surgeon purposely did not remove the entire tumor so that there would be more to remove later, for another surgery fee. Further, we learned that Abishek was only beingadministered 3 of the 5 recommended chemotherapy agents he required. He went through all of the side-effects of chemo, but with little benefit. Sounds unimaginable, but sometimes medicine as a business overrides the Hippocratic Oath.

Things were not looking good for Abishek when we met him, but every child deserves a chance. I called on a friend whose father is the chief of surgery at the best pediatric hospital in Ahmadabad, 10 hours away and he immediately agreed to see Abishek, free of cost. The doctors, while warning us of the worst, said Abishek had a small chance of surviving and started him right away on the correct chemo. We took Abishek and his family back and forth to the hospital in Ahmadabad, pestering doctors for quicker results, bothering nurses for extra blankets, and even donating blood to Abishek.
While most of the Abishek’s doctors, neighbors, and family members had given up hope of his survival, we stubbornly, continued to consult with experts, continued to look for better chemotherapy agents, and showered Abishek with his favorite chocolates and juice boxes. Ever y visit to Abishek’s house was heartbreaking as we watched Abishek waste away, cancer ravaging his body, and imagining that this all could have been avoided if Abishek’s cancer was detected earlier and if this criminal hospital in Indore hadn’t put greed over medicine.

While going through the heartbreaking journey with Abishek, my spirits and hopes were also lifted by another one of our special cases, Sachini, in Sri Lanka.

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KITCHEN-GYENARI-1Gyenari Korean BBQ & Lounge has offered to host a Happy Hour for Haiti this coming Tuesday, January 26th from 5-8pm. 20% of all tabs will go to Real Medicine Haiti relief.

This is a bit last minute, a bit unexpected, but we hope you can stop by for a quick cocktail and snack for the sake of a country in need. Hope to see you there!

Gyenari
9540 Washington Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90232-2631
(310) 838-3131
Get directions
(public parking is across the street in a lot on Cardiff Ave.–you get an hour free!)

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The Real Medicine Foundation (RMF) and NYU’s prestigious Capstone program have announced a partnership and three graduate students have arrived in Jhabua, Madyha Pradesh to assist with RMF’s malnutrition program.
An estimated 60 million children under the age of five are estimated to be malnourished India. The state where RMF is concentrating, Madhya Pradesh, has the country’s highest malnutrition burden, with 60% of its children under-five malnourished. Of the six million malnourished children in the state, 1.3 million of them have severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and one million have moderate acute malnutrition (MAM).
Children with MAM are able to recover with careful diet regulation and nutritional supplements, and generally do not require hospitalization. SAM presents itself in two general forms: complicated and uncomplicated. Complicated SAM entails outlying medical complications such as hypothermia and pneumonia. Both forms of SAM require a minimum stay of 14 days in a hospital.
RMF’s comprehensive approach to eradicating malnutrition focuses on the entire continuum of care from identification to treatment and prevention. The students will be conducting 14 days of field research to gather information on malnutrition knowledge, prevention activities, and treatment in government facilities throughout Jhabua and Alirajpur districts. Their research will help provide RMF with baseline analysis for new districts and with information about communities and facilities that are in need of assistance, as well as identify obstacles and problems faced by malnutrition field workers when working with local communities.
We will be taking the students to all 5 Nutritional Rehabilitation Centers in Jhabua and Alirajpur to assess the centralized treatment of SAM. In addition, the students will be going to village Anganwadi Centers, both rural and town, to interview Anganwadi workers about their needs, knowledge, and any recommendations they may have into improvements that could help children.
The RMF team here is excited to have the students, and is very much looking forward to their help and insights!
capstonephoto

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Haiti quake damages pile up

"Palais National d'Haiti" The Haitian version of the "U.S. Wh... on Twitpic Picture of the "PALAIS NATIONAL" before and after the Earthqu... on Twitpic

Looks like the Presidential Palace and the UN peacekeeping HQ are among the more prominent buildings lost in today’s quake in Haiti. Obviously the least of the issues.

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