By Tim Saunders on
British actress Sienna Miller has blogged from Haiti about the work that still needs to be done following January’s earthquake.
“I came to Haiti as an ambassador for International Medical Corps, an organization that I have been working with for over a year," she wrote in the Huffington Post. "Their teams arrived 22 hours after the devastating earthquake of January 12 and have been a powerful and leading medical presence ever since.
“We flew the following morning to Port-au-Prince and were met in the chaos by Andy Gleadle, our operations director, (the kind of ‘man mountain’ that you hope to be around in disaster zones like this one) and were briefed on the security issues we potentially faced. For starters, the local jail was destroyed in the quake, and as a result, 5,000 prisoners are free and roaming the streets. There were serious security problems in Haiti before the earthquake, but of course everything has now intensified. Three NGO workers were kidnapped last week…
“My role here as ambassador is simple: we need to raise awareness of the road ahead for Haiti — and raise a significant amount of new funding through appeals to the public. Most people just don’t realize that the problems Haiti faces are really only beginning. This country was in desperate need before the earthquake hit. The problems they are now facing are tenfold. The onset of the rainy season, which is imminent, means that the temporary camps that are housing hundreds of thousands of people will be washed away. Water-borne diseases will be rife, nutritional needs will become even more prevalent and there is inevitably a massive increase in sexual and gender-based violence within the camps. Donors have been incredibly generous, but as always, much, much more is needed.
“Please, if you can, donate now to International Medical Corps — an organization that is doing this incredible work, saving the lives and building a future for these beautiful people. To learn more about them and how you can help with what we are doing in Haiti please visit www.imcworldwide.org.”
To read Sienna Miller’s full blog, which gives a day-by-day account of her trip, click here.
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