Here are a cou­ple more reports from aid orga­ni­za­tions that are already in Haiti.

One thing to remem­ber when giv­ing dona­tions to char­i­ties or aid groups is to give money to those who already had peo­ple in Haiti. The first few 24 hours after a dis­as­ter are when the need is great­est, so you don’t want to give money to a group who is send­ing peo­ple there after the fact.

OXFAM says it has 100 peo­ple in the coun­try in their appeal for dona­tions that we found at the UK’s Orm­skirk and Skelmers­dale Advertiser.

The pub­lic is being asked to donate money to help pro­vide clean water, shel­ter and med­ical help to peo­ple affected in one of the poor­est coun­tries on earth.

Many aid agen­cies expressed fears that there will be out­breaks of water­borne dis­ease such as cholera in the wake of cat­a­strophic dam­age to the densely pop­u­lated cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince.

Oxfam, launch­ing an appeal for mil­lions of pounds, said it has a 100-strong team work­ing across the coun­try and would be respond­ing with pub­lic health, water and san­i­ta­tion ser­vices to pre­vent the spread of water­borne disease.

Penny Lawrence, Oxfam’s inter­na­tional direc­tor, said: “More than 85% of peo­ple in Haiti already live in poverty. With major build­ings destroyed it is likely that less well-constructed homes will be even more seri­ously affected.

“This earth­quake is grim news for the poor peo­ple of Haiti. We are call­ing for the gen­er­ous sup­port of the UK pub­lic to help us save lives.”

Medecins Sans Fron­tieres reports on the dam­ages to their facil­i­ties in Haiti and their efforts to resume service.

The first reports are now emerg­ing from Doc­tors With­out Borders/Médecins Sans Fron­tières (MSF) teams who were already work­ing on med­ical projects Haiti. They are treat­ing hun­dreds of peo­ple injured in the quake and have been set­ting up clin­ics in tents to replace their own dam­aged med­ical facilities.

The Mar­tis­sant health cen­ter in a poor area of Port-au-Prince had to be evac­u­ated after the earth­quake because it was dam­aged and unsta­ble. The patients are now in tents in the grounds and the med­ical staff have been deal­ing with a flow of casu­al­ties from the town. They have already treated between 300 and 350 peo­ple, mainly for trauma injuries and frac­tures. Among them are 50 peo­ple suf­fer­ing from burns—some of them severe—many of them caused by domes­tic gas con­tain­ers explod­ing in col­laps­ing buid­ings. At the Pachot reha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­ter another 300 to 400 peo­ple have been treated. In one of MSF’s admin­stra­tive offices in Petionville, another part of Port-au-Prince, a tent clinic there has seen at least 200 injured peo­ple. More are get­ting assis­tance at what was the Sol­i­darite mater­nity hos­pi­tal, which was seri­ously damaged.

One of MSF’s senior staff, Ste­fano Zan­nini, was out for most of the night, try­ing to assess the needs in the city and look­ing at the state of the med­ical facil­i­ties. “The sit­u­a­tion is chaotic,” he said. “I vis­ited five med­ical cen­ters, includ­ing a major hos­pi­tal, and most of them were not func­tion­ing. Many are dam­aged and I saw a dis­tress­ing num­ber of dead bod­ies. Some parts of the city are with­out elec­tric­ity and peo­ple have gath­ered out­side, light­ing fires in the street and try­ing to help and com­fort each other. When they saw that I was from MSF they were ask­ing for help, par­tic­u­larly to treat their wounded. There was strong sol­i­dar­ity among peo­ple in the streets.”

Another MSF coor­di­na­tor there, Hans van Dillen, con­firmed that Port-au-Prince was quite unable to cope with the scale of the dis­as­ter. “There are hun­derds of thou­sands of peo­ple who are sleep­ing in the streets because they are home­less,” said van Dillen. “We see open frac­tures, head injuries. The prob­lem is that we can not for­ward peo­ple to proper surgery at this stage.”

So many of the city’s med­ical facil­i­ties have been dam­aged, health­care is severely dis­rupted at pre­cisely the moment when med­ical needs are high.

CARE is send­ing more work­ers to their staff already in Haiti, and has some quotes from their staff on expe­ri­enc­ing the earthquake.

CARE is deploy­ing addi­tional emer­gency team mem­bers to the dev­as­tated city of Port-au-Prince in Haiti, where the worst earth­quake in 200 years destroyed houses and left thou­sands home­less. While the exact death toll from the 7.0-magnitude quake is not yet known, it is expected to be catastrophic.

CARE has launched an inter­na­tional appeal for funds for Haiti that will sup­port imme­di­ate emer­gency oper­a­tions. CARE plans to start food dis­tri­b­u­tion using stocks of high-protein bis­cuits from its ware­houses in Haiti. CARE is coor­di­nat­ing with other U.N. agen­cies and aid orga­ni­za­tions to assess dam­age and on-the-ground needs.

Ini­tial reports are that homes and build­ings across the city have been destroyed, includ­ing essen­tial ser­vices like hos­pi­tals. Elec­tric­ity is out and phone lines are down across the affected area, restrict­ing avail­able infor­ma­tion about the extent of the dis­as­ter. After­shocks con­tinue to rock the area and have caused land­slides out­side the city.

Sophie Perez, CARE’s coun­try direc­tor in Haiti, was in the CARE office in Port-au-Prince when the earth­quake hit. CARE’s staff in the Port-au-Prince office escaped the office safely, but we are still try­ing to deter­mine if all other staff in the area are safe.

”It was ter­ri­fy­ing. It lasted for more than a minute,” said Perez. ”The whole build­ing was shak­ing. Peo­ple were scream­ing, cry­ing. Last night, peo­ple were sleep­ing out­side because they were afraid to go back inside their homes. Many of the houses are destroyed any­way. There were eight after­shocks last night. Every­one was sleep­ing in the streets. The whole city is affected. It is just morn­ing here now, and I can hear heli­copters work­ing on the search and res­cue. The imme­di­ate need is to res­cue peo­ple trapped in the rub­ble, then to get peo­ple food and water. We’re par­tic­u­larly wor­ried about the chil­dren, because so many schools seem to have col­lapsed. Chil­dren were still in school in the after­noon when the earth­quake hit, so there are many chil­dren trapped. It’s horrifying.”

Dr. Helene Gayle, CARE pres­i­dent and CEO, said, ”This is an extremely seri­ous sit­u­a­tion. We cur­rently have 133 per­son­nel on the ground in Haiti and are deploy­ing addi­tional staff imme­di­ately to dis­trib­ute food, hygiene kits and water, as well as to deliver emer­gency health services.”

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