The recent earthquake in Haiti was very devastating. Just a few days after the earthquake, a team of Helping Hand for Relief & Development USA rushed to the quake-hit country to provide urgently needed relief items such as food, water, tents and medical relief, etc. Upon arriving after his three-week long relief trip to Haiti, Mr. Irfan Khurshid, Helping Hand USA’s Director International programmes appealed to all, particularly Islamic Centres, Mosques and Muslim communities to come forward and donate for urgently needed relief supplies and programmes in Haiti. Helping Hand for Relief & Development USA is a relief organisation with many ongoing international and domestic projects. Their international relief work includes: providing food and shelter, medical and education programmes, orphan and widow support, economic empowerment programmes and emergency relief.
After spending three weeks in Haiti, Mr. Khurshid described the situation following last month’s earthquake. He arrived in Haiti just a few days after the earthquake and immediately got to work, providing urgently needed relief items such as food, water, tents and medical relief to earthquake survivors. He described how he has visited many disaster areas in past years, including many Southeast Asian countries following the 2004 Tsunami and Pakistan, following the 2005 Earthquake there. Despite this, he said that the chaos he saw in Haiti during his trip was the worst he has ever seen. The Haitian government was quite ineffective even before the Earthquake, but has become essentially paralysed since the earthquake hit, he explained.
“The UN and other international relief agencies from all over the world are trying to provide relief but the situation is still very desperate and people are in need of lot of help,” said Mr. Khurshid about the ongoing situation. “Approximately 70% of the capital city, Port-au-Prince has been destroyed. Dead bodies are still in many of the destroyed houses, and many people are still without shelter, food and water,” he added.
Helping Hand for Relief & Development USA’s contribution composes of distribution of all types of relief items, with a main focus on food, water, shelter, medicine, doctors and mobile medical clinics. Mr. Khurshid explained in detail, saying:
“We have established a base camp and an office in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. We have a 10-person staff working in Haiti, which includes two local (Haitian) doctors, four local support staff, and two support staff from Dominican Republic. Doctor and volunteer teams from North America are arriving at our Base Camp to help us in our relief activities. Many of them bring donated medicines with them.”
Mr. Khurshid appealed to all for help by sending donations to purchase the above relief items. He also requested medical professionals to volunteer by going to Haiti and helping in Helping Hand for Relief & Development USA’s medical relief camps and also that they bring medicine with them if possible. He added that some airlines do not charge for Medical Relief Boxes for Haiti.
For further information Helping Hand for Relief & Development USA’s websites
www.IHHRD.org and www.MuslimsforHaiti.org may be visited.