PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A cholera outbreak that has killed more than 250 people in rural Haiti is stabilizing, health officials said Monday, as aid groups and the government race to prevent it from spreading to the capital’s squalid camps of earthquake survivors.

The outbreak was expected to continue spreading, but aid groups and the government said a drop in the death rate and the number of new cases suggested it could progress more gradually than feared.

“The situation is beginning to stabilize. Since yesterday we have registered only six new deaths,” Health Ministry Director Gabriel Timothee said at a news conference.

Officials said no cases have originated in the capital, Port-au-Prince, where authorities fear abysmal hygiene, poor sanitation and widespread poverty could rapidly spread the disease through the sprawling tent slums erected after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Five patients were diagnosed with cholera here over the weekend, but officials said they got sick outside the capital.

As part of the effort to slow the spread of the disease, Timothee said the government has asked for garbage to be removed around the camps of homeless.

If efforts to keep cholera out of the camps fail, “The worst case would be that we have hundreds of thousands of people getting sick at the same time,” said Claude Surena, president of the Haiti Medical Association. Cholera can cause vomiting and diarrhea so severe it can kill from dehydration in hours.

Robyn Fieser, a spokeswoman for Catholic Relief Services, said she was confident that aid groups and the Haitian government will be prepared to respond to an outbreak should it occur in the camps. But she stressed that the challenge of preventing its spread is “immense.”

“There are proven methods to contain and treat cholera, so we know what we’re dealing with. The biggest challenge is logistics, that is, moving massive amounts of medicine, supplies and people into place to treat them and prevent the disease from spreading,” Fieser said from the neighboring Dominican Republic.

Doctors Without Borders issued a statement saying that some Port-au-Prince residents were suffering from watery diarrhea and were being treated at facilities in the capital city. Cholera infection among the patients had not been confirmed, however, and aid workers stressed that diarrhea has not been uncommon in Port-au-Prince since the earthquake.

“Medical teams have treated many people with watery diarrhea over the last several months,” Doctors Without Borders said.

Aid workers in the impoverished nation say the risk is magnified by the extreme poverty faced by people displaced by the quake, which killed as many as 300,000 people and destroyed much of the capital city. Haitians living in the camps risk disease by failing to wash their hands, or scooping up standing water and then proceeding to wash fruits and vegetables.

Timothee said the outbreak has killed 259 people and sickened 3,342.

“We are expecting a gradual spreading of cholera in the country, and the way it will do that is still unpredictable,” said Michel Thieren, an official with the Pan-American Health Organization in Haiti.

Aid workers are coaching thousands of impoverished families how best to avoid cholera. Various aid groups are providing soap and water purification tablets and educating people in Port-au-Prince’s camps about the importance of washing their hands.

Aid groups also began training more staff about cholera and where to direct people with symptoms. The disease had not been seen in Haiti for decades, and many people don’t know about it.

Members of one grassroots Haitian organization traveled around Port-au-Prince’s camps booming warnings about cholera from speakers in the bed of a pickup truck.

“Many people have become sick,” announced Etant Dupain, in front of the Champs de Mars camp by Haiti’s broken national palace. “If you have a family member that has diarrhea, bring them to the hospital immediately. Have them use separate latrines.”

In a promising development, aid group Partners in Health said hospital management was improving in the city at the center of the initial outbreak, St. Marc, which is about a 60-mile (95-kilometer) drive northwest of Haiti. Just 300 patients were hospitalized on Saturday, a number that has decreased by the end of each day.

A cholera treatment center in St. Marc is expected to be functional within the week, and efforts were ongoing to make clean water available in rural communities, especially those where rivers were the only source of water.

Some health experts were hopeful that they will be able to control the outbreak of cholera in impoverished Haiti.

“In a way, it couldn’t have happened at a better moment than now because everyone is on the field — lots of (non-governmental organizations), lots of money. We haven’t had any hurricanes so far this fall but people are here, and people are prepared,” said Marc Paquette, Haiti director for the Canadian branch of Medecins du Monde.

___

Associated Press writers Mike Melia and David McFadden in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.

Haiti official: Cholera outbreak is stabilizing (AP) | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – An anxious public waited Friday to hear whether hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean would be allowed to run for president of Haiti, but one thing is already certain: The singer has brought sizzle to the election, attracting fresh attention to a country still devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Dozens of police were on guard against possible violence outside the electoral commission, which was expected to release its list of candidates who meet Haiti’s eligibility rules. The decision has already been delayed once this week because of uncertainty over candidate qualifications; Jean’s supporters suspect members of Haiti’s political elite are trying to block his campaign.

A choatic scene of swarming journalists and television crews at the building became tense when a gunshot rang out on the street outside, but it was unclear if the shot targeted the commission. Police quickly began sweeping the building, and journalists were moved to a room upstairs.

Jean told The Associated Press that his candidacy was being challenged over the requirement that everyone who runs must have lived in the country for five years before the Nov. 28 election.

The Haitian-born musician, whose parents brought him to the United States as a child, has lived off and on in Haiti in recent years, like many wealthy Haitians. He says he can’t meet the residency in part because he has been a roving ambassador, appointed by President Rene Preval in 2007.

A Haitian newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, on Thursday cited an electoral commission member as saying that Jean did not make the list. Officials with the agency declined to comment on the report and a lawyer for the musician, Jean Tholbert Alexis, insisted it was wrong.

“I can confirm to you that Wyclef Jean will be on the list of candidates for president,” Alexis told journalists in the lobby of the commission, located in a former gym since its previous home was destroyed in the quake.

“I have my own sources, and based on the meeting Wyclef had with President Preval yesterday, I can tell you that he will be on the list,” Alexis assured.

Ahead of the expected ruling, Jean moved from a compound outside the capital to a hotel around the corner from the electoral commission and his family issued a statement saying he was still hoping that he would be accepted as a candidate either later Friday or over the weekend.

Jean, who gained famed as a member of the hip-hop musical group Fugees before building a solo career, has no political organization, not much of a following beyond his fans of his music and only a vague platform, casting himself as an advocate of Haiti’s struggling youth and saying he will ask reconstruction donors to help the country’s dysfunctional education system.

He also has faced persistent criticism over alleged financial mismanagement at the charity he founded, Yele Haiti.

On the other hand, he has generated global attention to a race in which almost no one outside Haiti could even name any of the candidates.

“If he hadn’t been involved, today, no one would be talking about candidates in the Haitian presidential election,” said Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University in Houston.

The 40-year-old singer’s fame and wealth instantly made him a formidable candidate in the desperately poor Caribbean nation he left as a boy — though some Haitians question the seriousness of his run.

“I don’t think he’s a politician at all,” said Etienne St. Cyr, a pastor who helps at a camp for homeless earthquake survivors at the Petionville Country Club. “Maybe he’s not what we need right now.”

St. Cyr said Jean has not won over the people camped in squalid tents on the slope of a golf course, noting they already have allegiances to established political parties and the singer has not visited the camp.

Analysts say it is difficult to assess what kind of support Jean has beyond his mainly young and urban fans, but as a well-funded wild card, he has made more-established politicians nervous. Earlier this week, Jean said he had received death threats from somebody who called and told him to get out of Haiti.

The winner of the Nov. 28 election will take charge of Haiti’s earthquake recovery, coordinating billions of aid dollars in a country with a history of political turmoil and corruption. January’s earthquake killed an estimated 300,000 people and left the capital, Port-au-Prince, in ruins.

The devastation from the earthquake, coupled with frustration over a weak government response, have created an opening for a messianic outsider like Jean, said Robert Fatton Jr., a Haiti expert at the University of Virginia.

“The very fact that he is taken seriously when, in fact, he has no preparation to be president is an indication that the whole country, in particular the youth, looks at the typical Haitian population as a bankrupt kind of species,” Fatton said.

Fatton said he suspects the delay in announcing the candidate list, which was initially supposed to come out last Tuesday, owes to a struggle among the political elite, with some trying to keep Jean from running.

Jean is among nearly three dozen candidates who have filed paperwork to run for president.

At the start of his campaign he stepped down from the Yele Haiti charity, which was accused of pre-quake financial improprieties that benefited the singer. Yele Haiti, which raised more than $9 million after the earthquake, hired a new accounting firm and Jean has said it was working to improve its organization.

Jones, the professor at Rice, said that if officials do not accept Jean as a candidate, he can still influence the election by helping to mobilize the youth vote.

“The other candidates should try to get him on their team,” he said.

____

Melia reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. Associated Press Writer Chris Gillette in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report.

Wyclef Jean brings sizzle to Haiti election (AP) | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Singer Wyclef Jean officially announced his bid to be president of Haiti to a roaring crowd of supporters on Thursday, thrusting himself into a contentious race to lead an impoverished country reeling from a devastating earthquake.

At one point the hip hop artist-turned-politician bodysurfed on the hands of bandana-waving backers in Haiti’s capital and stepped onto a speaker truck to address the crowd of hundreds. Jean had submitted his candidacy papers 10 minutes before the provisional electoral office closed.

“America has Barack Obama and Haiti has Wyclef Jean,” shouted Jean, who was born in Haiti but raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. Many in the crowd wore T-shirts distributed by supporters.

Carrying his wailing 5-year-old daughter in his arms, Jean told The Associated Press: “It’s a moment in time and in history. It’s very emotional.”

The former Fugees frontman enters a highly competitive and crowded race for a difficult and dangerous job. Only one person has completed a democratically elected 5-year term in Haiti’s history — current President Rene Preval — who is poised to do it again and hand it off to an elected successor.

The winner of the Nov. 28 general elections inherits a destroyed capital, 1.6 million homeless people and countless groups fighting over billions of dollars in international reconstruction funds pledged after a January earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000 people.

Jean originally planned to join the coalition of Pierre Eric Jean-Jacques, former Chamber of Deputies leader. But he switched at the last minute to Jean-Jacques’ brother’s party to make room for government planner Leslie Voltaire in Jean-Jaques’ coalition.

The switch is not expected to affect Jean’s chances.

If Jean’s candidacy is approved, he will face several candidates who lack his international fame but have more political clout. Among the most formidable is ousted ex-Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis, who secured the backing of President Rene Preval’s powerful Unity party this week. Preval is barred from running by the constitution.

An eight-member board reviews would-be candidates and verifies whether they meet all the constitutional requirements, including having lived in Haiti for five consecutive years leading up to the election and never having held foreign citizenship. The list of official candidates will be published Aug. 17.

Jean’s U.S. upbringing could be a roadblock to his candidacy, but the singer says his appointment as a roving ambassador by Preval in 2007 exempts him from the residency requirement.

The singer was born on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince but left the country as a child and grew up in Brooklyn. He gained fame as a member of the Fugees and went on to have a successful solo career. He is known for such hit singles as “We Trying to Stay Alive” and “Gone Till November.” With the Fugees, he recorded the Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling album “The Score.”

In recent years, he has been active in Haiti with the charity Yele Haiti, prompting long-running speculation that he would run for president one day.

Earlier Thursday, he stepped down as leader of Yele Haiti, which faced criticism for alleged financial improprieties.

Jean helped found the charity five years ago to raise money and build awareness of the myriad problems in his impoverished homeland. It raised $9 million in the wake of the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed a government-estimated 300,000 people. Of that, it has spent $1.5 million on food, water, tents, clothes and other products for quake survivors, said Cindy Tanenbaum, a spokeswoman the musician said.

“I am not stepping down in my commitment to Haiti. On the contrary, regardless of what path I take next, one thing is certain: My focus on helping Haiti turn a new corner will only grow stronger,” Jean said in the statement.

Jean is not the only celebrity in the race.

Popular musician Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly arrived just ahead of Jean to submit his candidacy papers. He was accompanied by singer Pras Michel, who was also one of the original members of The Fugees and is supporting his bid for presidency.

Martelly welcomed Jean, a longtime friend, to the race. “I hope politics will not divide us,” he said.

Jean relied heavily on Haitian music during Thursday’s campaigning, with speakers blasting songs from Barikad Crew, a popular band that rallies thousands of Haitians with their political lyrics.

Jean also promised to bring U.S. rapper 50 Cent to perform at a campaign rally, although he did not say when.

As Jean stepped onto the speaker truck, the DJ and crowd began to sing a Haitian spiritual usually reserved for Jean-Bertrand Aristide, an ousted ex-president who was flown into African exile in 2004 aboard a U.S. plane.

The crowd replaced Aristide’s name with Jean’s.

If approved, Jean would have to deal with voters undecided on how to think about Haitians abroad. Many families are dependent on successful overseas relatives for remittances but often seem them as near foreigners. The singer’s American accented Creole and lack of French — for many things still the language of government here — will be constant reminders he did not grow up here.

During Thursday’s speech, Jean spent much of his time trying to defend his roots.

“I am not a diaspora candidate,” he said in Creole. Then he ended with the phrase: “Mwen pale Kreyol.”

The phrase, “I speak Creole,” has a double meaning in Haiti: that a person speaks the language, and that they mean what they say.

Singer Wyclef files to run for Haiti’s presidency (AP) | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Wyclef Jean has stepped down as leader of the embattled aid group he founded as he prepares to formally declare his candidacy for the Haitian presidency.

The singer released a statement that he was resigning the chairmanship of Yele Haiti effective immediately Thursday.

The Brooklyn, N.Y.-raised singer was making his way to his native Haiti and was expected to officially file his election papers Thursday afternoon at the provisional electoral council in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

“I am not stepping down in my commitment to Haiti. On the contrary, regardless of what path I take next, one thing is certain: My focus on helping Haiti turn a new corner will only grow stronger,” Jean said in the statement.

Businessman Derek Q. Johnson will take up the helm of the organization.

Jean helped found Yele Haiti five years ago to raise money and build awareness of the myriad problems in his impoverished homeland. It raised $9 million in the wake of the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed a government-estimated 300,000 people. Of that, it has spent $1.5 million on food, water, tents, clothes and other products for quake survivors, Tanenbaum said.

The organization — named for one of the former Fugee member’s songs — often worked in partnership with the United Nations and other agencies to implement its programs, lending its name and Jean’s cache to help raise funds.

But Yele came under criticism when post-quake scrutiny revealed alleged improprieties including that it had paid Jean to perform at fundraising events and bought advertising air time from a television station he co-owns.

Jean tearfully defended the organization in a news conference weeks after the quake. Yele also hired a new accounting firm after the allegations surfaced.

On Wednesday, The Smoking Gun website posted documents online indicating Jean personally owes $2.1 million in back taxes to the U.S. government.

His spokeswoman declined to comment on the new allegations. Jean was en route to Haiti and could not immediately be reached.

Numerous candidates are expected to seek the presidency in Haiti’s Nov. 28 election, from those representing small factions, towns and pockets of the diaspora to former heads of government. They have until Saturday to register.

Among the most formidable contestants will be ousted ex-Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis, who secured the backing of President Rene Preval’s powerful Unity party this week. Preval is barred from running by the constitution.

All candidates must be approved by an eight-member, presidentially approved electoral council that will verify constitutional requirements including having resided in Haiti for five consecutive years leading up to the election and never having held foreign citizenship.

The residency requirement could put Jean’s candidacy in jeopardy from the start. The singer — whose age was until recently listed as 37 but whose brother said this week he is 40 — left Haiti as a child and lives primarily in the United States.

In an interview this week with The Associated Press, the brother said advisers believe he will be excused from the requirement because he has held a formal, at-large Haitian ambassadorship since 2007.

Wyclef resigns from charity before Haiti campaign (AP) | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Former U.S. President Bill Clinton officially inaugurated the commission overseeing Haiti’s post-earthquake reconstruction on Thursday, pledging to accelerate and organize a process that has raised less than 1 percent of the money promised by international donors.

The Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission aims to oversee every rebuilding dollar that comes to Haiti through next year. The hope is that it will ensure transparency and encourage investment, helping transform a dysfunctional, cripplingly poor country crushed by the Jan. 12 earthquake into a self-sustaining nation with a prosperous middle class.

“The prime minister and I have made a commitment to the people of Haiti and the people of the world to make this process both transparent and accountable,” Clinton told reporters before the meeting.

Outside the cracked, upscale hotel where it met in a convention room, a better future seems a long way off. More than five months after Port-au-Prince shook, collapsed buildings line the streets and families live under leaky tarps at risk from floods, hunger and disease. Rebuilding has been hampered by organizational problems, government disfunction and the scale of the disaster itself.

Long-term money has also been slow to arrive. Some $3 billion has been committed for humanitarian aid such as immediate post-disaster rescue, medical care, emergency shelter and food, according to the United Nations.

But despite international pledges of some $5.3 billion over two years at the United Nations donors’ conference for Haiti in March, only a fraction has actually been delivered — just $40 million from Brazil. Though other pledges are expected to be delivered soon, much of that to be held in a Multi-Donor Trust Fund administered by the World Bank, Haitians are growing restless.

Enter the commission. The 26-member body was empowered under an 18-month emergency declaration by Parliament passed shortly before most members’ terms expired and the body essentially dissolved last month.

Half its voting members are Haitian officials, the rest representatives of each donor pledging at least $100 million or $200 million of debt relief: the United States, Canada, Brazil, Spain, France, Norway, Venezuela, Japan, European Union, Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank. President Rene Preval has a veto.

The concept is that the commission will oversee the spending of every donation above $500,000 to Haiti. Organizations will present their projects to the fund, needing its approval to get government and other support to move forward. The process will be tracked on the commission’s website.

On Thursday, Clinton and Bellerive announced the commission’s first approved spending projects:

• $45 million from Brazil and Norway in direct funds for the Haitian government, closing a quarter of its estimated $170 million budget shortfall.

• $1 million from the Clinton Foundation for buildings that can be used as storm shelters in the quake-ravaged towns of Leogane and Jacmel, which are often in the path of Atlantic hurricanes.

• A $20 million fund to provide loans to small- and medium-sized Haitian businesses, provided by Mexican communications magnate Carlos Slim and Canadian mining investor Frank Guistra.

Clinton-led commission starts up in Haiti (AP) | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

SANTA MONICA, Calif., April 29 /CHICAGOPRESSRELEASE.COM/ — UnifiedHelp.org (“UH”) has launched the Unified Help Exchange (“UHX”). It is a Craigslist for nonprofits. UHX allows nonprofits to post listings that outline specific requests for assistance (such as tents in Haiti) and allows average people or corporations to respond and provide the requested assistance. People or corporations can also offer to finance the requested assistance.

“We’ve all heard stories about nonprofits that urgently need specific items while also hearing about people and corporations that want to provide the same items. UHX allows them to find each other,” said Adam Radly, the founder of UnifiedHelp.org.

Although the launch of UHX has been brought forward in order to assist the Haiti relief effort, the UHX service is available at no cost to all nonprofits in any location for any purpose. Nonprofits can post listings in the following categories: food/water, medical, communications, educational and services (such as web development, accounting, IT, legal).

Listings posted by nonprofits will also provide information, such as whether they are on the ground in the affected area, are registered 501c3 organizations, have Navigator ratings, among other information that will enable people that are considering helping to be as informed as possible about the nonprofit.

Mr. Radly will be in Haiti from May 3-7 to meet with active nonprofits. “I’m looking forward to meeting with the nonprofits on the ground to figure how we can improve the UHX service and make it as useful as possible,” said Mr. Radly.

UHX is an efficient and free central marketplace that mobilizes the combined goodwill and resources of average people and corporations to give nonprofits the specific items they need at any point in time.

For more information visit www.UnifiedHelp.org or contact Adam Radly at info@UnifiedHelp.org, or 310-857-6725.

SOURCE UnifiedHelp.org

http://www.UnifiedHelp.org

UnifiedHelp.org Launched to Allow Ordinary People and Corporations to Help Nonprofits In Haiti | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Dr. Ofer Merin of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital headed the surgical team that left for Haiti shortly after the quake hit. On a recent stop in Chicago, he told WBBM the team was able to get up and running more quickly because a small advance team with satellite phones was able to tell them what to expect once they arrived. “It took less than six hours from the minute that our equipment arrived there that we started to treat the first patients.”

The toughest part, says Dr. Merin, were the heart-wrenching decisions of which patients to treat from among tens of thousands who urgently needed medical care.

Dr. Merin says the Israeli team treated over 1100 patients in 10 days, more than 100 a day, and delivered 16 babies. But, the ones he remembers most are the ones who haunt him – those they had to turn away because they just didn’t have the resources to help everyone.

Dr. Merin shared his insights in Chicago last week with the American Medical Association and the Chicago Fire Department.

Dr. Merin writes about his team’s experiences and challenges in the New England Journal of Medicine.

• Read it HERE

Regine Schlesinger reporting

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

Wrenching decisions haunt Haiti rescue surgeon | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Dr. Mahesh Raju can’t forget the haunting tragedies he encountered following the earthquake in Haiti.

He met a pregnant woman who had dug barehanded through the rubble for 12 days to find her husband and three children, too late to save them.

He saw a 4-year-old boy who, though he was starving, had saved half his food for his brother.

He met an 8-year-old boy who dived under a beam when his school collapsed around him. Trapped in the rubble for hours with a broken leg, the boy eventually was rescued but learned all but four of the school’s teachers and other students had been killed.

Yet the people of Haiti, who had been through such horrors, treated Raju kindly and graciously throughout his stay.

“They’re beyond grateful,” Mahesh said. “They’re very appreciative of everything and know they’ll need our help for a long time.”

Raju, 31, an internal medicine physician, grew up in Crystal Lake and graduated from Elgin Academy. He went to Haiti as part of a medical aid team from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

A big part of their mission, in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 quake, was to help with the transition from emergency treatment to long-term medical care for victims.

To help accomplish this, the team brought about 50 bags of medical supplies, including drugs, intravenous fluid and antibiotics.

They stayed at a school near Port-au-Prince and worked with French interpreters at different locations, mostly at the general hospital.

There, Raju helped set up an intensive care unit for patients sick from wound and amputation infections, tetanus and malaria, and other conditions like diabetes and heart failure.

Many illnesses were caused by the quake, and others were the result of stress and emotional trauma, while still more were brought about afterward by living outside in mosquito-infested tent cities with no food or sanitation.

One man was paralyzed in a stampede for food dropped from an aid helicopter.

Another man had suffered a cut on his head, then days later developed lockjaw and couldn’t eat. Doctors initially thought a stroke might be causing the condition, until they realized it was a tetanus infection attacking the nerves.

They gave the man antibiotics and think he is going to survive.

Raju had seen poverty before in India, but the lack of infrastructure and medical workers following the disaster made the situation worse in Haiti.

Because so many doctors had treated patients then gone home, Raju’s team worked to establish continuity of care, so when one medical team left, the next had the proper records and supplies to care for the patients.

Raju hopes someday to return.

“What I take away is not to forget about what’s going on down there after the media leaves,” he said. It’s probably going to take a few years for them to recover.”

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

Local doctor helps Haiti move to long-term care for quake victims | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

As a deputy coroner for Sangamon County, Jim Allmon sees death on a regular basis.

But he said nothing prepared him for the devastation he witnessed when he arrived in Haiti three weeks ago in an effort to help recover and identify some of the more than 230,000 who died as a result of the Jan. 12 earthquake that leveled parts of the impoverished island nation.

Then again, Allmon’s extensive training and almost a decade’s worth of experience working with the deceased kicked in as soon as he arrived in the capital, Port-au-Prince, he said.

“I think you have to turn it off while you’re there,” he said at a welcome-back get-together Saturday night at Delaney’s Bar and Grill, 2249 N. Third St. “Once you’re there, it’s almost like your skills take over. The easiest way I could describe it is when they brought us into Haiti, we were put into a situation where we really didn’t have time to unpack and settle in.”

It was his first trip to Haiti, and Allmon worked with Kenyan International Emergency Services, a company hired to recover and identify remains and repatriate those remains back to the families. Allmon returned to Springfield on Friday.

“The challenges over there were the identification and the recovery because there was a lot of debris to go through, a lot of roadblocks we hit with identifying some of the remains,” he said.

One particular roadblock was a lack of dental records. Many people, while employed with businesses or companies in Haiti, did not have such records with their employers.

That made identifying the dead particularly difficult, he said.

“We took photographs, and we did anything that anybody else would have done in a mass disaster,” Allmon said.

Now that it’s over, Allmon says the images ingrained in his mind are starting to hit home.

“There’s people starving there, literally, and I’ve never seen that before,” he said. “It’s tough. I don’t think it really hits you until you get home.

“I think there is hope for Haiti, but I think they have a very long road ahead of them.”

Rhys Saunders can be reached at 788-1521.

Read the original article from The State Journal-Register.

Deputy coroner helped identify dead in Haiti | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The earthquake in Chile was far stronger than the one that struck Haiti last month — yet the death toll in this Caribbean nation is magnitudes higher.

The reasons are simple.

Chile is wealthier and infinitely better prepared, with strict building codes, robust emergency response and a long history of handling seismic catastrophes. No living Haitian had experienced a quake at home when the Jan. 12 disaster crumbled their poorly constructed buildings.

And Chile was relatively lucky this time.

Saturday’s quake was centered offshore an estimated 21 miles (34 kilometers) underground in a relatively unpopulated area while Haiti’s tectonic mayhem struck closer to the surface — about 8 miles (13 kilometers) — and right on the edge of Port-au-Prince, factors that increased its destructiveness.

“Earthquakes don’t kill — they don’t create damage — if there’s nothing to damage,” said Eric Calais, a Purdue University geophysicist studying the Haiti quake.

The U.S. Geological Survey says eight Haitian cities and towns — including this capital of 3 million — suffered “violent” to “extreme” shaking in last month’s 7-magnitude quake, which Haiti’s government estimates killed some 220,000 people and left about 1.2 homeless. Chile’s death toll was in the hundreds.

By contrast, no Chilean urban area suffered more than “severe” shaking — the third most serious level — Saturday in its 8.8-magnitude disaster, by USGS measure. The quake was centered 200 miles (325 kms) away from Chile’s capital and largest city, Santiago.

In terms of energy released at the epicenter, the Chilean quake was 501 times stronger. But energy dissipates rather quickly as distances grow from epicenters — and the ground beneath Port-au-Prince is less stable by comparison and “shakes like jelly,” says University of Miami geologist Tim Dixon.

Survivors of Haiti’s quake described abject panic — much of it well-founded as buildings imploded around them. Many Haitians grabbed cement pillars only to watch them crumble in their hands. Haitians were not schooled in how to react — by sheltering under tables and door frames, and away from glass windows.

Chileans, on the other hand, have homes and offices built to ride out quakes, their steel skeletons designed to sway with seismic waves rather than resist them.

“When you look at the architecture in Chile you see buildings that have damage, but not the complete pancaking that you’ve got in Haiti,” said Cameron Sinclair, executive director of Architecture for Humanity, a 10-year-old nonprofit that has helped people in 36 countries rebuild after disasters.

Sinclair said he has architect colleagues in Chile who have built thousands of low-income housing structures to be earthquake resistant.

In Haiti, by contrast, there is no building code.

Patrick Midy, a leading Haitian architect, said he knew of only three earthquake-resistant buildings in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.

Sinclair’s San Francisco-based organization received 400 requests for help the day after the Haiti quake but he said it had yet to receive a single request for help for Chile.

“On a per-capita basis, Chile has more world-renowned seismologists and earthquake engineers than anywhere else,” said Brian E. Tucker, president of GeoHazards International, a nonprofit organization based in Palo Alto, California.

Their advice is heeded by the government in Latin America’s wealthiest nation, getting built not just into architects’ blueprints and building codes but also into government contingency planning.

“The fact that the president (Michelle Bachelet) was out giving minute-to-minute reports a few hours after the quake in the middle of the night gives you an indication of their disaster response,” said Sinclair.

Most Haitians didn’t know whether their president, Rene Preval, was alive or dead for at least a day after the quake. The National Palace and his residence — like most government buildings — had collapsed.

Haiti’s TV, cell phone networks and radio stations were knocked off the air by the seismic jolt.

Col. Hugo Rodriguez, commander of the Chilean aviation unit attached to the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti, waited anxiously Saturday with his troops for word from loved ones at home.

He said he knew his family was OK and expressed confidence that Chile would ride out the disaster.

“We are organized and prepared to deal with a crisis, particularly a natural disaster,” Rodriguez said. “Chile is a country where there are a lot of natural disasters.”

Calais, the geologist, noted that frequent seismic activity is as common to Chile as it is to the rest of the Andean ridge. Chile experienced the strongest earthquake on record in 1960, and Saturday’s quake was the nation’s third of over magnitude-8.7.

“It’s quite likely that every person there has felt a major earthquake in their lifetime,” he said, “whereas the last one to hit Port-au-Prince was 250 years ago.”

“So who remembers?”

On Port-au-Prince’s streets Saturday, many people had not heard of Chile’s quake. More than half a million are homeless, most still lack electricity and are preoccupied about trying to get enough to eat.

Fanfan Bozot, a 32-year-old reggae singer having lunch with a friend, could only shake his head at his government’s reliance on international relief to distribute food and water.

“Chile has a responsible government,” he said, waving his hand in disgust. “Our government is incompetent.”

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

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She tells us what they had to say today:

Yesterday, a Haitian judge said American missionaries Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter will remain in jail over the weekend as he awaits more testimony.

Judge Bernard Saint-Vil says he has asked two real estate agents and a pastor from the Dominican Republic to testify in Port-au-Prince about property the missionaries rented to set up an orphanage.

That is expected Monday. If they do not show, Saint-Vil says he still expects to rule next week.

He also said Thursday he wants to question a pastor and another man from a border town.

Silsby and Coulter were among 10 Americans detained in Haiti while trying to take 33 kids to the Dominican Republic after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The others have been released and returned home.

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

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Jan Bonnema, the Minnesota-based founder of the Cap-Haitien orphanage where the children lived, said the orphans were to fly to Miami in the afternoon on a charter and their adoptive parents will be able to take their children home on Thursday.

Sara Vanzee and her husband, Tim, are waiting for their 13-month-old son, Albert, to arrive.

The couple says the situation has been stressful even though they understand the suspicions surrounding adoptions given recent cases in Haiti.

“Our hope is that they’re OK with it, that they can see that we absolutely love these children and that we want to provide for them,” Vanzee, who is from the U.S. Midwest, told The Associated Press.

The case of the six orphans seized Saturday at the Port-au-Prince airport echoed that of 10 Americans caught last month trying to take youngsters out of the earthquake-ravaged nation. But this time things turned out differently, with the six children being handed over to the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday.

The two cases highlight the perils of trying to remove youngsters from this desperate country.

At the very moment when Haiti’s impoverished children are in greatest need – and well-meaning foreigners are most willing to help – fears of child trafficking are making it harder than ever for them to leave the Western Hemisphere’s poorest land.

Fears were exacerbated by the case of 10 U.S. Baptist missionaries who were stopped in late January trying to take a busload of 33 children to the Dominican Republic without proper documentation.

Thousands of desperate Haitian parents, unable to care for their own children, have shown themselves eager to give the youngsters away in hopes of giving them a better life. But they are terrified they will be tricked by predators who will enslave or sexually abuse the children.

Haiti’s government immediately halted new adoptions in the chaos that followed the Jan. 12 quake, allowing only those already approved to move forward.

That chill hardened into a freeze after Saturday’s incident. A U.S. State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity, said the latest drama held up the departure of 50 orphans approved for U.S. adoption.

It took the U.S. ambassador and Haiti’s prime minister to iron out on Tuesday what turned out to be an ugly misunderstanding.

Four women including an adoptive mother from Minnesota arrived at the airport with six children ages 1 to 5 from the Cap-Haitien orphanage. The U.S. Embassy official carrying the documents needed to usher them through immigration was running late.

Suddenly, a group of 20 men rushed to block them, cursing them and screaming “‘You can’t take our children!”‘

The women were briefly detained, but the children wound up spending three days sleeping on the ground in a tent-city social services home, according to their escorts from the Children of The Promise orphanage.

Still in detention were two of the 10 U.S. Baptist missionaries. Their eight associates were released last week and flew back to the United States.

6 Haitian orphans to resume trip to U.S. homes | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

When Brittany Walano heard Mario Tricoci would be cutting hair at his Orland Park salon, she did what any normal 20-year-old would do.

“Oh, I bought a new outfit,” she said. “He’s my idol. I want to be just like him.”

Walano is a style assistant at Mario Tricoci’s Hair Salon and Day Spa in Orland Park. While washing a client’s hair, she kept her eyes glued to the famed beautician as he cut, blow-dried and styled other clients.

Tricoci stopped by the salon to cut hair to raise money for victims of the Haiti earthquake. Since Feb. 10, he’s made visits to four of his salons to raise funds.

The $200 cut includes a shampoo, conditioner and a blow-dry style. The proceeds will go to Julie’s Holy Family Village in Thomazeau and Julie’s Holy Family Fishing Village in Mouillage Fouquet, Haiti. Tricoci said it costs about $2,800 to build one home, and he hopes to raise about $50,000, to build 19 homes.

“I wanted to do something that would be tangible,” Tricoci said.

He credits his wife, Cheryl, for coming up with the idea.

“My wife said, ‘Do what you do best, ‘ ” he said. “I did something similar to this for (the victims of) Hurricane Katrina. It’s something we’re doing to give back.”

While the minimum donation is $200, Tricoci said one client donated $1,000.

As Tricoci worked diligently, his focus merited an audience among the other employees.

“It’s very inspiring,” hair stylist Sarah Koseck said. “You want to see what he does and see if you can pick up anything.”

Frankfort resident Donna Jasutis frequents the salon and decided to book an appointment for her 17-year-old daughter Jessica. Jasutis said Jessica had five different hair colors in the past two years and every salon she took her to wasn’t helpful.

“I figured if anyone could help her, Mr. Tricoci could,” she said. “I mean, it’s a lot of money, but since 100 percent of the proceeds are going to Haiti, I like that.”

Tricoci said the cut he gave Jessica was the “new shag.” In the 1970s, women had shaggy hair cuts that were a little messy. Now, its still shaggy but more organized.

Although Tricoci loves to cut and style hair, he only does it sparingly, he said.

Working mother of two, Madonna Golden, 42, said she felt “wonderful” once Tricoci was finished cutting her hair.

“This is the first time I’ve ever been to Mario’s,” she said. “I’ve got two kids. I needed to do something for myself.”

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Harpo Productions says Jim Allen of Amarillo, Texas, and his wife will appear on Friday’s live episode of  “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” A spokeswoman says the interview will be via satellite from Amarillo.

The missionaries still face possible charges and their leader and her former nanny remain in a Port au Prince jail. The missionaries have denied the trafficking charges.

The group was caught Jan. 29 trying to take the children out of Haiti without adoption certificates. They’ve said they planned to set up an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.

Read the original article from WBBM News Radio.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A heavy downpour sent the throngs living beside Haiti’s shattered national palace cowering under tarps early Thursday as the rush of water made much of the camp of earthquake victims impassable — an ominous foretaste of the rainy season to some.

Amputees struggled to maneuver through mud on crutches and wheelchairs.

Many in the makeshift tent cities housing nearly 600,000 people in Haiti’s capital still live without even plastic tarps, which the international community is trying to get to everyone by May 1.

So when the rain comes, bed sheets spread on sticks as protection from the sun quickly get soaked and people move in temporarily with neighbors who have waterproof tents. The lucky actually have beds off the ground.

“It’s hard to keep my kids clean. There’s too much rain, too much dirt,” said Joseph Dukens, 25, at the camp beside the national palace.

He pointed to his baby daughter, who had her leg amputated below her hip. “It’s only going to get worse.”

The government, aid groups and foreign governments have been wrangling for five weeks over how to housing earthquake survivors, but neither the weather nor the people are waiting.

Makeshift camps have hardened into shantytowns, adding a new dimension to the capital’s teeming slum life with an extra helping of disease, hunger and misery brought on by the Jan. 12 disaster, which killed more than 200,000 people.

While the camps blossomed, officials debated what to do with the 1.2 million people left homeless by the disaster nationwide.

In the meantime, people are planning to stay in some very dangerous places: at the bottom of hillsides they know will collapse in a heavy rain or near riverbeds that are bound to flood. They are crowded into polluted areas where sanitation is limited and disease is already starting to spread.

“The government has said for weeks that they have identified sites, but time is getting short and there has been little progress,” said Ian Bray, an Oxfam spokesman.

And the delay has caused complications, as evident on a former landing strip-turned-boulevard called Route de Piste, where a cluster of ramshackle villages has taken root.

Row upon row of corrugated tin and wood shacks stand against the wind as dusty men walk between them carrying saws and hammers.

Children look for the snow cone man at the crossroads, near where a lottery dealer named Max has set up his booth. In a shack marked “Boulangerie Pep La” — the people’s bakery — the smell of dough wafts from the oven.

The new neighborhood is very densely packed; some 27,000 people live there, according to Haitian Red Cross workers. U.N., foreign and local officials are directing aid to the site, while also designating it a “priority for decongestion” — meaning some people must move out.

The overcrowding is a chief reason officials say they don’t want to give people the waterproof tents. But people in the shantytown are making their own space, pushing out neighbors who arrived later so as to expand their tarp-and-pole shelters into more permanent homes.

And people simply do not want to go far from where they always lived and worked. With property hard to come by, aftershocks continuing and 38 percent of Port-au-Prince’s buildings destroyed by the magnitude-7 quake, according to U.N. satellite imagery, their options are limited.

On Thursday, a group of U.S. senators sent a letter to President Barack Obama urging the immediate relocation of displaced Haitians to higher ground before the rainy season begins in earnest.

“Tragedy will strike again when the rain comes. We urge your administration to stress this point with President (Rene) Preval and Prime Minister (Jean-Max) Bellerive,” they wrote.

Senators George LeMieux and Bill Nelson of Florida, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also encouraged long-term investment, micro-loans for small businesses and seeding commerce outside Port-au-Prince.

Meanwhile eight of the 10 American missionaries detained while trying to take 33 Haitian children into the Dominican Republic without adoption certificates arrived in Miami late Wednesday night.

The two remaining detainees, Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter, went to a Port-au-Prince courthouse on Thursday to be questioned by the judge but Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said he had to cancel the session because the translator didn’t show up.

“Everything is going well,” Silsby told reporters, though she added, “I don’t know the exact day we are going to be free.”

Coulter, who has diabetes and was taken to a hospital the previous day, said she was feeling better.

Defense lawyer Aviol Fleurant said the judge rescheduled the questioning for Friday and was seeking to arrange a visit to the orphanage that Silsby, the missionary group’s leader, had hastily arranged in Cabarete in the Dominican Republic.

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

Rains adds to misery for Haiti’s homeless quake victims | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said on CBS’ “The Early Show” that Clinton had left New York Presbyterian Hospital. Clinton lives in Chappaqua, a Westchester County hamlet about 35 miles north of New York City.

“He’s out of the hospital and in the car back enroute to his home,” McAuliffe told the morning news program.

“And if I know President Clinton, he’ll be on the phone … calling people asking for more help for Haiti and where he can get pickup trucks so they can deliver food or generators. If I know Bill Clinton, he’ll be raring to go in about 35 minutes.”

Clinton could be back at work as soon as Monday, cardiologist Allan Schwartz said previously.

Clinton had quadruple bypass surgery at the same hospital more than five years ago, and returned Thursday to have a clogged heart artery opened after suffering discomfort in his chest.

Two stents resembling tiny mesh scaffolds were placed inside the artery as part of a medical procedure that is common for people with severe heart disease.

Schwartz said tests had showed that one of the bypasses from the surgery was completely blocked.

Instead of trying to open the blocked bypass, doctors reopened one of his original blocked arteries and inserted the two stents. The procedure took about an hour, and Clinton was able to get up two hours later, Schwartz said.

There was no sign the former president had suffered a heart attack, and the new blockage was not a result of his diet, Schwartz said.

“The procedure went very smoothly,” Schwartz said, describing Clinton’s prognosis as excellent.

McAuliffe said 63-year-old Clinton participated in a conference call on earthquake relief as he was wheeled into an operating room.

“An aide had to literally take the phone away from him,” he said.

If Clinton could have, said McAuliffe, he would have discussed Haiti “right through the procedure.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled from Washington to New York to be with her husband. She left the hospital at about 11:30 p.m. without speaking to reporters.

Aides to Mrs. Clinton said she still planned to go ahead with a previously scheduled trip to the Persian Gulf. The trip was to begin Friday afternoon, but now she is planning to leave Saturday so that she does not have to rush back to Washington.

Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, was also with him at the hospital.

In an angioplasty, the procedure Clinton had on Thursday, doctors thread a tube through a blood vessel in the groin to a blocked artery and inflate a balloon to flatten the clog. Often, one or more stents are used to prop the artery open.

The angioplasty is usually done with the patient awake but sedated. It’s one of the most common medical procedures done worldwide. More than a million angioplasties are done in the United States each year, most involving stents.

“It’s not unexpected” for Clinton to need another procedure years after his bypass, said Dr. Clyde Yancy, cardiologist at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas and president of the American Heart Association.

The sections of blood vessels used to create detours around the original blockages tend to develop clogs five to 10 years after a bypass, Yancy explained. New blockages also can develop in new areas.

“This kind of disease is progressive. It’s not a one-time event so it really points out the need for constant surveillance” and treating risk factors such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure, he said.

The former president has been working in recent weeks to help relief efforts in Haiti. Since leaving office, he has maintained a busy schedule working on humanitarian projects through his foundation.

Clinton’s reputation as an unhealthy eater was sealed in 1992, when the newly minted presidential candidate took reporters on jogs to McDonald’s. He was famously spoofed on “Saturday Night Live” as a gluttonous McDonald’s customer.

Friends and family say Clinton changed his eating habits for the better after his bypass surgery.

“He has a brutal schedule. … He travels more than 200 days a year, working on his global initiative, helping people,” McAuliffe said. “I hear people say, ‘Will he slow down?’ That’s not President Clinton. If anything, he’ll redouble his efforts if there’s actually time to redouble what he does.”

But should Clinton slow down a little?

“Yeah, probably,” McAuliffe said. “But he’s been doing this for 63 years and you’re not going to change him. He always says, ‘It’s not about me; it’s about all those people.’”

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

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Judge Bernard Saint-Vil has the final word on whether to free the missionaries, though he gave the prosecutor-general the opportunity to raise objections.

He said he was accepting defense attorneys’ request to provisionally free the Americans while an investigation of the case continues.

It is unclear when the missionaries, most from an Idaho Baptist church group, might be released, and Saint-Vil said it was too early to say whether they would be able to leave this earthquake-crippled Caribbean nation if granted provisional freedom.

It is also unclear what bearing releasing the missionaries might have on whether they go to trial.

Saint-Vil on Thursday privately questioned the last of a group of parents who said they willingly gave their children to the Baptist missionaries, believing the Americans would educate and care for them.

“After listening to the families, I see the possibility that they can all be released,” Saint-Vil told The Associated Press. “I am recommending that all 10 Americans be released.”

It wasn’t known late Thursday whether the prosecutor had received Saint-Vil’s formal recommendation. The prosecutor couldn’t be reached for comment.

The Americans were charged last week with child kidnapping and criminal association after being arrested Jan. 29 while trying to take 33 children, ages 2 to 12, across the border to an orphanage they were trying to set up in the Dominican Republic.

The following day, group leader Laura Silsby of Meridian, Idaho, told the AP the children were obtained either from orphanages or from distant relatives.

She said only children who were found not to have living parents or relatives who could care for them might be put up for adoption.

However, at least 20 of the children are from a single village and have living parents. Some of the parents told the AP they willingly turned over their children to the missionaries because they could no longer feed or otherwise care for them – the children’s school and many of their homes collapsed in the quake.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Thursday that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had not personally intervened in the case, as the U.S.-based legal team for one of the missionaries, Jim Allen of Amarillo, Texas, requested in a Tuesday letter.

“We have been very careful not to intervene specifically in this case,” Crowley said. “This is a matter for Haitian authorities to resolve.”

Crowley added that Washington was “satisfied with the overall conduct of this case.”

The pastor of the Meridian, Idaho, church attended by several of the detainees said he had yet to receive any official word on their release.

“Our confidence continues to remain, both in our faith and in our attorneys that represent our people,” said Pastor Clint Henry, of Central Valley Baptist Church. “Now we wait and pray, believing that in the coming hours we will receive the news we have waited for.”

On Wednesday, from behind cell bars in the stuffy, grimy jail where they have been held, the missionaries refused to be interviewed.

“We’ve said all we’re going to say for now. We don’t want to talk now,” Silsby said. The women were held separately from the men, who shared their cell with nine Haitian men, some of whom played checkers on the cell floor.

“We will not talk unless our lawyer is present,” said Paul Thompson, pastor of the Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Silsby decided last summer to create an orphanage in the Dominican Republic and in November registered the nonprofit New Life Children’s Refuge Inc. in Idaho.

After Haiti’s catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake, she accelerated the plan and recruited her fellow missionaries. Silsby told the AP she was interested only in saving suffering children.

However, she did not have the Haitian papers required to take the children out of the country, and a Dominican diplomat told the AP he warned her the day the missionaries were arrested that without those papers she could be arrested.

Haitian government officials view the case both as a distraction to the greater issues of earthquake relief and as a matter of national sovereignty.

The prospect of child trafficking is taken seriously here, and the Americans’ case has provided a government widely criticized at home for its response to the quake an opportunity to show it is functioning.

The case has tapped into fears in Haiti that traffickers would take advantage of the chaos immediately after the quake to abduct children.

It also has irritated Haitian government officials conducting business out of the same police station used to jail the Americans. Nearly every government building was destroyed in the quake.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has lamented the fact that journalists are paying more attention to 10 Americans than the 3 million Haitians in need of help.

Before the quake, prospective parents crowded every day outside the U.S. Embassy, waiting to apply for visas for the children they wanted to adopt. About 1,000 children were legally adopted by foreigners in 2008 – by French parents in nearly half the cases.

Thousands more Haitian children, orphaned and not, leave the country illicitly each year, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund.

They are forced into domestic or agricultural labor, used as sex slaves or sold on the clandestine market for adoption.

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Judge Bernard Saint-Vil must now send his recommendation to the prosecutor, who may agree or object, but the judge has the final authority to decide whether they stay in custody or go free.

Saint-Vil said he was making his recommendation a day after questioning the Americans and hearing testimony from parents who said they willingly gave their children to the Baptist missionaries, believing they would educate and care for them.

“After listening to the families, I see the possibility that they can all be released,” Saint-Vil told The Associated Press. “I am recommending that all 10 Americans be released.”

Later, Saint-Vil said he would recommend provisional freedom for the detainees while the investigation continues. But it wasn’t clear whether their possible release means they would be allowed to leave Haiti, or what implications the judge’s decision could have on whether the charges may be dropped.

By midday Thursday, Saint-Vil had yet to deliver his formal recommendation to the prosecutor.

Gary Lassade, an attorney for one of the Americans, said he expects the judge will recommend the case be dropped — though the prosecutor could also appeal that ruling.

The Americans, most from an Idaho Baptist group, were charged last week with child kidnapping and criminal association after being arrested Jan. 29 while trying to take 33 children, ages 2 to 12, across the border to an orphanage they were trying to set up in the Dominican Republic.

The following day, group leader Laura Silsby of Meridian, Idaho, told the AP that the children were obtained either from orphanages or from distant relatives. She said only children who were found not to have living parents or relatives who could care for them might be put up for adoption.

However, at least 20 of the children are from a single village and have living parents. Some of the parents told the AP they willingly turned over their children to the missionaries on the promise the Americans would educate them and let relatives visit.

Drew Ham, assistant pastor at Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, said Thursday that the judge’s recommendation is encouraging but it’s too soon to celebrate with the detainees still in custody.

“It’s a good sign,” Ham told the AP. “But we still don’t have confirmation of their release.”

On Wednesday, from behind cell bars in the stuffy, grimy jail where they have been held, the missionaries refused to be interviewed.

“We’ve said all we’re going to say for now. We don’t want to talk now,” Silsby said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

The women were held separately from the men, who shared their cell with nine Haitian men, some of whom played checkers on the cell floor.

“We will not talk unless our lawyer is present,” said Paul Thompson, pastor of the Eastside Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. Lassade represents Thompson’s cousin, Jim Allen of Amarillo, Texas.

A Dallas attorney for Allen, Hiram Sasser, told the AP that his client was recruited just 48 hours before the group left last month for the Dominican Republic on what Silsby termed an emergency rescue mission.

“He did not know many of the other people who were on the mission trip, or what other people were going to do, or about paperwork,” Sasser said.

Silsby had decided last summer to create an orphanage in the Dominican Republic and in November registered the nonprofit New Life Children’s Refuge foundation in Idaho.

After Haiti’s catastrophic Jan. 12 earthquake, she accelerated the plan and recruited her fellow missionaries. Silsby told the AP she was only interested in saving suffering children.

She told the AP after her arrest, however, that she did not have all the Haitian papers required to take the children out of the country.

A Dominican diplomat told the AP he warned her that without those papers she could be arrested.

Read the original article on DailyHerald.com.

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A team of four plastic and reconstructive surgeons from the Medical Center will leave Chicago on Saturday, Feb. 6, for a pre-arranged week-long humanitarian visit to Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic.

Although it typically focuses on children with birth defects in the biannual trips, this year the team expects to perform reconstructive surgery for patients flown in from Haitian clinics.

On Sunday, Feb. 7, a 12-member team of physicians, nurses, physical and occupational therapists, plus a pharmacist and administrative support staff, will travel to the small town of Fond Parisien, Haiti, about 30 miles east of Port-au-Prince.

There they will replace a team of nurses and physicians who helped organize and run a field hospital for the last two weeks.

The relief camp, based at the 60-acre site of the Love A Child Orphanage, currently provides medical care, food and shelter for almost 300 patients injured by the earthquake, plus their families. The camp is surrounded by a growing tent city of more than 500 displaced Haitians.

In separate trips on Feb. 8 and 11, three physicians and three nurses will go to Port-au-Prince to participate in medical relief missions established there by the International Medical Corps.

“It’s astonishing how many injuries we are seeing,” said Richard Cook, Professor of Anesthesia and Critical Care at the University of Chicago, who has been at the Fond Parisien site since Jan 26.

He reports that they have been “diagnosing every possible illness you can imagine and treating all sorts of things in a rough way.”

Most of the patients, particularly those with serious orthopedic injuries, have come from areas in and around Port-au-Prince, Cook said. There are also local people who need medical care, but the significant ongoing and post-surgical cases have arrived by bus from the capital, or via helicopter.

This week the team began receiving patients needing post-operative care from the Navy’s hospital ship, the USS Comfort.

“I’ve seen more pediatric amputations in my nine days here than I have in the rest of my career combined,” Cook said during a phone call earlier this week. “The devastation is almost incalculable.”

The teams have been recruited and organized by University of Chicago emergency medicine specialists Christian Theodosis, and Chrissy Babcock, who worked with non-governmental agencies on the ground in Haiti and the Dominican Republic to assess needs and select and equip the appropriate teams.

The Medical Center has donated medications, supplies and diagnostic and treatment equipment, including a portable X-ray machine and two ultrasounds. Philips Medical is supplying two mobile “C-arms,” advanced X-ray imaging systems. More than 200 faculty and staff have volunteered to help.

Some of the supplies requested seem odd for 21st-century academic medicine, but reveal the basic medical needs the teams are providing.

Besides multiple medications, especially antibiotics, analgesics and antimalarials, a note from pharmacist Dima Awad stressed: “Babywipes! Babywipes! Probably the most important thing.” Earlier requests called for measles vaccines, vitamin A, thousands of trash bags and 500 pairs of adult crutches. As the patient population grew, the team asked for tools to distribute medicines, such as small empty bottles and Ziploc bags.

For their own comfort, staff requested pre-cooked mac and cheese and anything to improve the taste of the water. Awad also warned the incoming teams to bring bathing suits, because “neither the bathrooms nor the showers are private.”

Members of the initial Haiti Relief team began returning to Chicago this week. A multi-institutional team of emergency medicine specialist returned from Port-au-Prince on Tuesday, and most of the Medical Center team now in Fond Parisien returns to Chicago on Monday night.

Theodosis, who has served as medical director of the Fond Parisien medical relief camp since Jan 26, plans to stay in Haiti through the end of February.

Babcock helped organize and prepare the follow-up teams from Chicago and will join Theodosis there with the new team, which will remain in Haiti for two weeks.

Despite the hardships, challenges and the sparse resources, the volunteers have found the experience enormously rewarding. “We haven’t lost a single patient yet,” Theodosis said, despite the rapid influx of complex injuries.

“Late last night,” he wrote in a Feb. 5 e-mail, “a terribly injured 23-year-old female with profound crush injuries to her left arm and leg, arrived in camp, barely conscious.” She had left Port-au-Prince seeking medical care and weeks later turned up at a relief camp in the Dominican Republic.

The staff there “felt she needed a higher level of care,” Theodosis wrote, “and they sent her and her family overland looking for us.”

She barely made it, he notes, but “we were able to keep her alive overnight, she responded to resuscitation efforts … and this morning the military medics flew her to the USS Comfort.”

“These are the cases,” he wrote, “that remind us why we are here.”

“The Haitian people are a constant inspiration to the people who are working here,” said Cook.

“They are stoic, gracious, polite, optimistic and deeply faithful. They are responding as well as any community possibly could to such a disaster. The children are beautiful beyond belief, and the wounds will break your heart.”

University of Chicago sending second round of medical teams for Haitian relief effort | Chicago Press Release Services - Chicago's leading press release newswire service; professional press release services, press release distribution and newswire services.

Funds raised will be donated directly to the American Red Cross and will support emergency relief efforts to help those affected by the earthquake.

Assistance provided by the American Red Cross includes sending relief supplies, mobilizing relief workers, providing financial resources and other support.

“Our customers have truly demonstrated an outpouring of support to help the residents of Haiti during this crucial time of need,” said Scott Freidheim, executive vice president for Sears Holdings.

“This has been a community-wide effort in cities across the country and in more than 2,200 Sears and Kmart stores, as well as on Sears.com and Kmart.com. We are proud to be a part of this effort.”

Beyond making monetary donations, customers in select markets like Puerto Rico were invited to donate first-need items to collection bins at Kmart and Sears.

The retailers accepted donations collected by local schools and other community organizations that wanted their fundraising efforts to reach those that needed it the most.

All merchandise that was collected in-store was delivered to the local chapter of the American Red Cross. Since the delivery to the American Red Cross, all fundraising efforts have been focused on monetary donations.

Across the country, Sears and Kmart associates are stepping up and volunteering to help with disaster relief efforts.

The $2 million raised for Haiti relief is part of over $38 million raised by Sears Holdings in the past 15 months for community programs such as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the March of Dimes, and Heroes at Home.

Donations will be accepted nationwide in-store through Jan. 31at Sears and Feb. 13 at Kmart.

About Sears Holdings Corporation

Sears Holdings Corporation is the nation’s fourth largest broadline retailer with approximately 3,900 full-line and specialty retail stores in the United States and Canada.

Sears Holdings is the leading home appliance retailer as well as a leader in tools, lawn and garden, home electronics and automotive repair and maintenance.

Key proprietary brands include Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard, and a broad apparel offering, including such well-known labels as Lands’ End, Jaclyn Smith and Joe Boxer, as well as the Apostrophe and Covington brands.

It also has the Country Living collection, which is offered exclusively by Sears and Kmart. We are the nation’s largest provider of home services, with more than 12 million service calls made annually.

Sears Holdings Corporation operates through its subsidiaries, including Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Kmart Corporation.

For more information, visit Sears Holdings’ Web site at searsholdings.com.

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