DATELINE/CITY: July 12, 2010 - Washington, DC
FORMAT: Soundbites
STORY SUMMARY: Remarks by State Department and USAID officials provide an update on efforts in Haiti six months following the January 12 earthquake.
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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: Available at http://thedigitalcenter.com/projects/2140-senior-officials-say-us-governments-haiti-relief-efforts-to-provide-life-services-providing-food-water-and-medical-supplies-and-transitional-housing-to-over-600000-haitians
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CLIP CONTAINING (4) SOUNDBITES:
Soundbite #1 Rajiv Shah, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator
Summary: Rajiv Shah, USAID Administrator, says the U.S. significant early response with international humanitarian community in conjunction with the government of Haiti effectively helped meet the food needs of more than 3.5 million vulnerable Haitians, conducted vaccination efforts reaching over a million resulting in containment of any large scale epidemics. They are currently providing shelter to more than a million Haitians developing transitional strategies to get people into transitional housing.
IN: "This is an important occasion to remember and honor the sacrifice of more than 230,000 Haitians, and to recognize that this was one of the most damaging and destructive natural events we've ever seen.
In response to that, the United States did mount a significant and effective early response. And I would remind us that we were looking at an environment where we were not sure that people in Haiti would have access to food, to water, to shelter. And the International Humanitarian Community, working in partnership with the Government of Haiti, effectively met the food needs of more than 3.5 million vulnerable Haitians, has effectively conducted vaccination efforts that have reached more than a million Haitians, and as a result, has contained any large-scale epidemics, which we had all been concerned about, and is in the process of both providing emergency shelter to more than a million Haitians, but also, as Cheryl points out, working on transition strategies to get people into real transitional housing and to rehabilitate homes so that when safe and when improved, people can return to their normal homes of living." OUT (RT-1:20)
Soundbite #2 Cheryl Mills, Counselor, U.S. Department of State
Summary: State Department official Cheryl Mills says the next issue for the recovery teams and
Haitian government is where to build the temporary shelters for the 600,000 people in makeshift shelters.
IN: "We have actually started to see some movement on the building of temporary shelters, but that has really only been in the most recent few weeks that we've actually kind of seen the movement. The international community has pledged about 125,000 shelters which will cover about 600,000 people. But the issue is where that land is going to be to be able to move them forward, and how we ensure that all that equipment and the materials make it into the country to be able to stand that up. And I think that's something that is going to be one of the bigger challenges over the next several months. But the international community is committed, and President Preval has indicated he's committed, to ensuring that we step through that in a way that actually brings people from the tents where they are to more permanent shelters, if you will, or transitional shelters where they can exist comfortably for three to five years before moving into long-term housing. The health metrics are actually better in Haiti than they were before the earthquake. That is not necessarily a statement of how great things are, but a statement of some of the challenges - places that Haiti began in. But certainly, as the case is - P.J. just referenced that we haven't seen an outbreak in major disease, but we've also been able to see the kind of vaccinations and other steps taken to be able to provide access to health care that has been enormously impactful and something that we are fortunate for and that we need to keep knocking wood and keep working hard at to ensure we continue to see that." OUT (RT-1:11)
Soundbite #3 Rajiv Shah, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator
Summary: Dr. Shah says that child protection and child priority is very important in everything that the relief teams are doing in Haiti.
IN: "Well, I would just say on children, child protection and child welfare is an important priority across pretty much everything we're doing in Haiti. And so when you look at the pre-earthquake statistics of more than 40 percent of kids being malnourished, or if you look at the percentage of kids in school and that have access to safe places to have water or sanitation, these are all the types of things we're focusing on in our relief program and our recovery program. And the opportunity to rebuild the Haitian agriculture sector and to do it in a way that focuses on nutrition programming for children, the opportunity to reconstruct school feeding programs in efforts to reach children in a targeted way with food, with clean drinking water, and with disease, protection, and control really will make a huge difference in child welfare for the entire population. And it's been a main focus of the ministry. It's a main focus of much of our program." OUT (RT-:56)
Soundbite #4 Rajiv Shah, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator
Summary: U.S. Goal to help build Haiti back better which will be the long-term housing challenge.
IN: "So our goal in - across every sector is to really help Haiti build back better. And of course, as we do that, we know that we're facing real, important challenges; the issues of how you remove 25 million cubic meters of debris, which is probably more than 20 times that existed in other tragedies such as the World Trade Center, in an environment that is congested and where infrastructure was challenging to begin with, is a tremendous challenge. And we honor the fact that the Government of Haiti is making some important strides in addressing that. But like that, there are important challenges. We will continue to stand with the Government of Haiti as a partner for the relief and for the recovery and, as Cheryl points out, for the long-term reconstruction." OUT (RT-:43)
TRT: 4:19
VIDEO PROVIDED BY: U.S. Department of State
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Media Contact: Ken Richards, +1-202-647-6251, [email protected]
/PRNewswire -- July 12/
SOURCE U.S. Department of State
