Crisis in Haiti.
On January 12, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck just 16 miles west of the capital of Haiti, wrecking Port-au-Prince’s airport, blocking main roads and making initial rescue efforts extremely treacherous. American and international healthcare practitioners, nurses and caregivers traveled en masse to the country—the poorest in the Western Hemisphere—to volunteer their services. Organizations like Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, and the Red Cross raised millions in aid in record time via text messaging and other means. As generous as these donations were, much more money and many more resources will be needed on an ongoing basis to really help the Haitian people emerge from this overwhelming disaster: between 250,000 and a half-million people were killed by the quake, two million rendered homeless (including an estimated one million orphans) and more than three million people remain seriously wounded or otherwise impacted by this awful disaster.
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