Haiti - the disaster of disaster

"But in Haiti, there are no bulldozers waiting to be deployed. No backup health care. There are no emergency systems. There are no warehouses of supplies. There are no helicopters waiting to fly the injured to hospitals.
There are simply human hands digging at the rubble, and suffering human hearts. There is poverty, and amidst that poverty, there is this new and undeserved horror."

• The Caribbean nation of 9 million is a former French colony and the world’s oldest black republic, founded by freed slaves following a revolt that led to independence in 1804.
• Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas with an annual per-capita income of $560. It ranks 146th out of 177 countries on the UNDP Human Development Index.
• More than half the population lives on less than $1 a day and 78 percent on less than $2. There is a high infant mortality rate (60 for every 1,000 births) and the prevalence of HIV among those between ages 15 and 49 is 2.2 percent.
• Haiti’s infrastructure is close to total collapse and severe deforestation has left only 2 percent of forest cover.