Without wastage of resources, let's help Haiti
Friday, 15 January 2010 10:08 | 
15th January 2010: Haiti is on its knees, mourning her dead, desperately in need of urgent help to rescue the people trapped beneath the rubble.
The country needs help to treat, feed, clothe, house survivors. It needs urgent help to take care of the dead, to award them a dignified send off, and at the same time to avoid outbreak of epidemics.
Haiti needs our support to get on its feet again, heal its wounds, regain hope and start reconstructing houses which may be resistant to this type of terrible earthquake.
It is truly encouraging to see the way governments, humanitarian organizations, churches, individuals have moved fast to deliver the humanitarian relief.
In social networks, individuals have been urging and reminding their governments to help the people of Haiti. So many have offered to coordinate fundraising drives. This is the type of solidarity the world needs.
As the world mobilizes support for the people of Haiti, it would be wise to learn from the approach adopted by the US administration. President Barack Obama has designated the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Dr. Rajiv Shah, to be the government's unified disaster coordinator to ensure different government departments act in a unified way. Those providing humanitarian assistance to Haiti may want to have a central coordination point from where real needs can be assessed and proper action planned and executed. This is a very effective way of avoiding wastage of human and material resources.
Let’s consider the case of medicines. We should for instance, avoid having ten organizations taking to Haiti the same medicine when ten different medicines are needed. Without proper coordination, this is most likely to happen. In fact it always happens. Apart from leading to wastage of precious medicines (because the unused usually rot in containers) and money used to buy them, lack of coordination in this case means people will be deprived of the other medicines they need.
Those making promises to help Haiti should be sincere and keep their promises. They should equally act fast in delivering what they have promised.
I’d like to appeal to the conscience of those charged with the responsibility of managing humanitarian assistance to Haiti. Please make sure help gets to the people who truly need it. We’ve known of cases of people who take advantage of such disasters to enrich themselves. Before putting any of that money into your pocket, please look at the faces of the hungry children and orphans on Haiti streets, the homeless people in the capital Port-au-Prince, the people in need of urgent medical care, etc and ask yourself if it is right to become rich at their expense.
Lastly, in whichever way we can, please let’s help the people of Haiti.
By Stephen Ogongo
Last Updated (Friday, 05 February 2010 08:08)