Haitian Red Cross volunteers tend to wounds of earthquake survivors

A team of 18 Haitian Red Cross volunteers are busy at work in the parking lot of the Canapé Vert hospital. From early in the morning until late in the evening, they tend to countless wounds and injuries and offer words of encouragement and support.

Since the earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January, volunteers such as Michelle Yvétia and Emmanuella Michel, have assisted between 150 and 200 persons each day. Nurses by profession, they left their families behind in Gonaives to come to Port-au Prince to work with the Haitian Red Cross.

Dr. Jean-Joseph Samedy and Dr. Paul-Marcel Barthelémy have also joined the Red Cross team.

"I haven’t worked with the Red Cross before but in this disaster we are all Haitian; we are all human so everybody works together," says Dr. Samedy.

Dr. Barthelemy, a general practitioner for two years normally works at the local general hospital.

"The hospital ran out of stocks. We have nothing to work with there so I came here to help," he says.

Orémise Exantis is a patient among the hundreds who received help from to the massive disaster response.

"Look at my head. My whole house fell on me but I’m glad nothing happened to my children," she says. "I’m lucky I got some help."

The efforts of the Haitian Red Cross are also supported by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. More than 400 Red Cross Red Crescent aid workers - including 180 from Caribbean and Central and South American National Red Cross Societies - have arrived in Port-au-Prince, with dozens more en route.