UTAH HOSPITAL TASK FORCE: GOING FORWARD:

Because of the extraordinary sign up of volunteers on the UHTF web site (which we kept open to optimize priority medical emergency skills and Creole speaking skills), we hoped we could take a second large team of volunteers to Haiti. Unfortunately, conditions at the Port-au-Prince Airport are drastically changing, and options for both entry and departure are tightening. Food, water, and shelter for the long term are becoming highest priority – and this is not our mission. UNICEF, WFP, and World Vision are now on the ground in Haiti and are managing these elements.

Therefore the UHTF has decided not to take a large second plane team to Haiti

Conditions in Haiti are evolving; some things are now turning to a new (and difficult) normal. Native hospital workers are beginning to return to the hospitals. Critical wound care is believed to have been mostly now performed. Though obviously much remains to be done, such is a many year task which has never been part of the UHTF mission.

We are told that in a few days we can no longer count on U.S. Air Force transport from Haiti to the USA because the military will soon begin shuttling out military personnel who have been on the ground since the earthquake; most seats on the military transport planes will then be allocated to military requirements.

Daily transport assistance by the 82^nd Airborne to and from remote areas for our medical teams will no longer be available. UHTF would have to rent transport trucks. Our campsite will be transitioned back to the military for its larger and longer term role in Haiti. This would result in increased camp costs for security, water, food and bathroom room facilities.

We are informed the airport will be turned back to Haitian government control on February 13, further complicating the issue and taking away priority options we currently have. Evacuation efforts by the U.S. Government will effectively end. We would be required to work out landing spots for a second plane in and out with Haitian government officials rather than with the U.S. Government with who we are in good favor. Our confidence in the Haiti government’s control of the severely damaged airport is not great enough to risk inserting the second team.

The volunteer team leaders in Haiti are unitedly unwilling to incur the risk of having a second team of 120 doctors, nurses, and translators stuck in a country with little available food and water, inadequate medical care, uncertain ground transport, increasing risk of disease, and increasing hunger of the populace. Remember, we are all volunteers who are doing this – we have no paid leadership or staff.

Simply put, regardless of how much any of us want to send a second team to Haiti and continue serving the Haitian people, we love and respect all of our fellow volunteers far too much to subject them to a potential situation where we cannot effectively and safely control the length, security, and living conditions of their stay in Haiti.

Those noble volunteers who wish to go to Haiti should now do so in smaller groups under the auspices of Healing Hands for Haiti or other established long-term aid groups. We will work with the HHH leadership to confidentially transfer the names and emails of all those who volunteered to serve with the UHTF. As we have stated from the beginning, all donations for UHTF have gone to the Healing Hands for Haiti Foundation and that 501(c)(3) organization will continue to benefit from those donations with smaller teams into Haiti and rebuilding their medical facility in Haiti.

Our tents and non-medical supplies in Haiti will, upon our departure, be turned over to the Mardy orphanage. All medical supplies will be turned over to clinics here.

We appreciate all those who have volunteered, all those who have helped with donations and all those still willing to find ways to help ease the pain of those suffering in Haiti.

(From UHTF website)