Haiti’s children and families still need help a year after hurricanes

A year after hurricanes devastated the country, killing 1,000 people and leaving 800,000 homeless, many families and children in Haiti still need help. The eyes of the world focused on Haiti when four hurricanes hit the Caribbean nation in as many weeks.

In the town of Gonaives alone, hundreds of families died after many houses were completely submerged in water. Now one year on, the nation seems to have been forgotten. But the devastation hasn’t gone away. Piles of soil more than three metres high, surrounded homes in parts of the town keeping people out of their homes, where once they trapped them in. Some families still haven’t been able to go back to their home since the hurricanes came. Crops have suffered, leaving many children malnourished in this, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. "Some of the children who come here now are in such a bad way that there is little we can do for them," said Natasha D'Jmbahteist, a nurse at Gonaives hospital. "They don't respond to treatment, so we have to send them away,” she told a BBC correspondent. And it breaks our hearts to do this."

Just outside of Gonaives there is a large lake, which only a few months ago was farmland. The people who lived there now crowd together in huts in one of two camps for the people made homeless. "The floods washed my pregnant daughter away, my husband also died, and our house was destroyed,” said Justine, an elderly grandmother. “I am always thinking of what I have lost, the children who have died in my hands." James Poule, 15, is still coming to terms with what happened: "I woke to find water pouring over my bed in the darkness,” he said. “My clothes had all been washed away, along with everything I had. "My mother drowned. I was at the top of the house, and she was in the floor below and she couldn't climb up, so the water just washed her away. At least I was able to help save the lives of my two little brothers. "I have absolutely nothing. I have no clothes; I don't even have any shoes. And I cannot go to school. I just sit around here waiting for God to advise me."

Nearby the United Nations is building an emergency shelter for 2,500 people. But, many in Gonaives say the local authorities are doing next to nothing to help them.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children