Quake-hit Haiti faces tropical storm with thousands homeless

Doctors and nurses from home and abroad are struggling against a range of logistical difficulties to get people patched up before a storm hits Haiti. Rebels hold key roads and infection is spreading.

Foreign aid workers on Monday helped the Haitian authorities to treat the wounded from Saturday's 7.2 magnitude quake as a tropical storm lined up that threatened to add to the 1,297 people who perished on the weekend.

Hospitals in the towns of Les Cayes and Jeremie have struggled to cope with nearly 6,000 people who were injured by the quake that saw over 13,000 homes collapsing, many in unreachable rural areas.

How bad is the situation on the ground?

The quake on Saturday hit Les Cayes especially hard, with cement buildings collapsing in the 100,000 strong seaside city.

Its hospital was partially destroyed and its neonatal intensive care unit had to be evacuated recently over fears it would collapse, with the injured lining the streets in makeshift shelters.

Similar situations were registered in Jeremie to the north of Les Cayes at the tip of the peninsula.

The tremors destroyed over 7,000 homes and damaged 5,000 others, making 30,000 families homeless.

Schools, offices and churches were also in a bad state, forcing people to live in tents and take shelter under trees.

What are authorities doing?

"From this Monday, we will move faster. Aid provision is going to be accelerated," recently appointed interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry wrote on Twitter.

"We will multiply efforts tenfold to reach as many victims as possible with aid."

Aid workers and doctors arrived from the US and the Caribbean, determined to help the wounded.

But they were met with sometimes insurmountable obstacles.

"Basically, they need everything," said Inobert Pierre, a pediatrician with the nonprofit Health Equity International, which oversees St. Boniface Hospital, about two hours from Les Cayes.

"Many of the patients have open wounds and they have been exposed to not-so-clean elements," added Pierre, after visiting a hospital with 200 patients and another with 90.

"We anticipate a lot of infections."

What challenges are rescuers facing?

Tropical depression Grace is set to hit Les Cayes on Tuesday, soaking areas with 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain that could add floods and mudslides to the woes of the Haitians recovering from the quake.

In turn, this newest disaster could bring the risk of waterborne diseases like cholera to the 5,700 wounded people, many who did not even have their own homes anymore.

"This disaster coincides with political instability, rising gang violence, alarmingly high rates of malnutrition among children," said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.

On top of all these factors, Fore said there was "the COVID-19 pandemic — for which Haiti has received just 500,000 vaccine doses, despite requiring far more.''

Other than the health issues, Haiti also has a political system in disarray after the assassination of President Moise Jovanel and many areas of the country are under the control of gangs.

These factors, combined with the poorest economy in the western hemisphere, have made communication and logistics an even greater challenge.

One of the thousands of destroyed houses that have left so many homeless

Around 1,300 people were killed and thousands more injured in the Haiti quake