International Medical Corps has been on the ground in Haiti since 22 hours after the devastating 7.0 earthquake hit in January 2010, taking over 200,000 lives and displacing hundreds of thousands. We were a first-responder to the cholera epidemic that ravaged the fragile post-disaster nation in late 2010 and 2011. And in October 2012, we mobilized an emergency response in the south after Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc, causing 54 deaths and displacing an additional 200,000 Haitians.
With endemic poverty, stark inequalities and persistent violence, Haiti has long been termed a "fragile state. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010 caused unprecedented destruction, taking over 230,000 lives, displacing more than 1.2 million and reducing Port-au-Prince to rubble. Cholera epidemics and hurricanes, most recently Hurricane Sandy, have only further exacerbated the vulnerability of Haitians, over 370,000 of whom still live in flimsy shelter and tent camps.
Mobilizing our largest emergency response to date, we arrived in Haiti just 22 hours after the earthquake and immediately began treating casualties in a makeshift hospital. At the peak of the crisis, our 408 medical volunteers saw as many as 1,000 patients a day while training Haitian health care workers. Following a comprehensive emergency response, we implemented long-term programs in Haiti including cholera treatment, primary health care, water and sanitation, and disaster preparedness.
We have trained over 1,505 health care providers in Haiti and worked side-by-side with Haitians to rebuild its decimated health care system. Three months after the earthquake, we helped develop Haiti's first-ever continuing medical education program and subsequently launched an innovative emergency medicine development program that trained more than 300 physicians. Our established presence and local partnerships make us uniquely positioned to respond when emergencies like Hurricane Sandy occur.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
