Haiti earthquake: Hope in the Heartache

Published: 16 January 2010

Latest update: 12.20pm Saturday 16 January 2010

Eighteen-month-old Navensky might be surrounded by death, damage and destruction, but he is alive.

Like all patients at L’Hospital General in downtown Port-au-Prince, he cannot be accommodated in a hospital building. The few buildings still standing following Haiti’s worst quake in 200 years are unsafe to use.

Consequently, he lies in a hospital bed on the street outside. Trucks carrying bodies rumble past regularly.

When Nevensky’s house started to collapse, his father Jerome dashed upstairs to rescue him. They both made it outside just as their home caved in all around them. Navensky suffered a broken shoulder, leg and arm during their hurried escape.

As darkness was falling and the streets were in chaos, Jerome and his wife Nadia had to wait until morning before carrying Navensky to hospital. The walk took nearly two hours and it was not until the early afternoon that hard-pressed medical staff could treat him.

World Vision is supporting the hospital by supplying essential medical supplies such as surgical gloves, syringes, antibiotics and bandages.

Navensky moans softly and flinches if he thinks you are about to touch him. Otherwise, he does not complain. Nadia and Jerome will spend the night anxiously watching over him. They have no home to return to.

Jerome is thankful for the humanitarian organisations like World Vision who have come to help the relief effort.

“If it was not for the NGOs the Haitian people would be lost,” he says.

World Vision Australia is appealing for donations to aid the relief effort in Haiti.

Read latest updates about World Vision’s response and children sponsored by Australians here.

You can donate to the Haiti earthquake appeal here.

How you can help

Take action now

Learn more

Let's talk about it

Your vision

Jessica
Mar 06, 2010

“I feel so sorry for all the people who had died in the earthquake or have had their family die.”

View all comments

World Vision Australia

13 32 40

Haiti earthquake: Hope in the Heartache

How you can help

Take action now

Learn more

Let's talk about it

Your vision

Post a comment

Gift catalogue

Sponsor a child.

West Africa food crisis - Donate now