Nearly a week after hurricane hit Haiti, UN appeals for aid

MARFRANC, HAITI >> At a cramped police station serving as a makeshift clinic, Darline Derosier fastened IV drips to jail cell bars, wiped the brows of cholera patients and tended to the wounds of those injured when Hurricane Matthew slammed into Haiti’s southwestern peninsula.

She was the only health worker helping about 40 patients Monday inside the station bereft of police as she waited for help to arrive in the hard-hit town of Marfranc nearly a week after the Category 4 storm struck Oct. 4.

“People will die soon if we don’t get some aid,” an overwhelmed Derosier told The Associated Press.

The U.N. humanitarian agency in Geneva made an emergency appeal Monday for nearly $120 million in aid, saying about 750,000 people in southwest Haiti alone will need “life-saving assistance and protection” in the next three months. U.N. officials said earlier that at least 1.4 million people across the region need assistance.