Haiti Earthquake Appeal: "epidemic starting" reports Haiti nurse

See also Haiti Earthquake Emergency Appeal

We have posted a number of interviews of SOS staff from Haiti non Youtube. The interviews are in French and so we offer a translation. The first interview is with Leonie Saint-Ange : Our village Nurse for both the SOS Children's Village and the SOS Children programmes in Santo, Port au Prince

The interview can be seen at here

The translation runs:

My name is Leonie and I am a nurse for SOS Children's Villages and family programmes in Santos (Port au Prince). Since last Tuesday we have been going through an extremely difficult situation. The earthquake has caused a serious problem in Haiti, both in the SOS Children's Village and also in the communities where SOS Children works. In the communities where SOS Children is active the majority of people have died. We have a huge epidemic which we will see more and more of over the next few days including people with malaria, typhoid, conjuctivitis and a while range of different pathologies. This is why we have asked SOS Children to continue and increase the extent of their work regarding health measures. The hospitals have been destroyed and we have nothing, no medicine even to treat the children of the village or our relief workers who are working on our programmes.

Note:

As we understand the situation in Haiti almost no one sleeps in a building any more, even those whose houses are safe will not go indoors because they fear collapse. One consequence of this is likely to be an increase in Malaria, which is a major child killer in the developing world. Typhoid is caused by drinking water contaminated by sewage. The reasons when an epidemic of Typhoid is occuring is clear given the lack of safe water and of working sanitation. Conjunctivitis passes easily from person to person when they are not able to wash properly and can lead to other infections if people who cannot wash their hands rub their eyes.