Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Feb 3, 2010 / 05:43 am
Catholic Relief Services and its Caritas partners in Haiti have provided food and water to hundreds of thousands of victims of the massive January earthquake and have provided medical aid to thousands. The agency says it has raised over $38 million for the task and is “extremely grateful” for all its donors.
More than 100,000 people have been fed by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in Port-au-Prince, the organization reports. Just days after the earthquake killed an estimated 200,000 people and left as many as one million homeless, CRS turned a golf course in the Haitian capital into one of the first relief camps. About 40,000 people have been served there.
CRS is collaborating with the local Church and Caritas partners including Caritas Haiti and the Caritas Internationalis confederation.
A CRS team worked with Haitian colleagues to restore operations at St. Francois de Sales hospital, one of the country’s oldest. Though the Port-au-Prince hospital was 70 percent destroyed, CRS worked with the hospital administrator to restore its capacity to receive patients. Volunteer medical teams are now performing up to 200 critical operations per week.