REPORTING. In Haiti, the victims of the earthquake are piling up in makeshift camps: “We are obliged to stay – Franceinfo

Four wooden stakes, a few pieces of fabric for a roof, a muddy ground of five square meters. This is where Brunette, her husband and their two children, including a baby of a few months, survive. “Since Saturday, we sleep there, our houses have all fallen. My baby is sick from the humidity. He has a fever and diarrhea.” Like her, many Haitians took refuge in makeshift camps where appalling insalubrity reigns, after the earthquake that hit southwestern Haiti. Saturday August 14. In the city of Les Cayes, the largest camp in the country is home to 600 people, half of whom are children.

A man walks into Brunette’s cabin. He wants to show us his child: “Concrete fell on him.” Several badly healed scars slashed the little one’s skin. Marie-Rose also sleeps in these unsanitary huts. Inside, it is stiflingly hot during the day, and at night, it rains. She is worried about her grandson, an infant. THEui also has a fever: “With the earthquake and the rain, the baby got sick. But we don’t have any medical help or money to take him to the hospital. “

International aid is struggling to deliver basic necessities and the reconstruction of nearly 40 000 homes destroyed will take a long time. The hundreds of thousands of victims of the earthquake which killed nearly 2,200 people are also having to cope with the bad weather triggered by the passage of Hurricane Grace. “We have no food, we sleep badly when it rains, explains this man. Under the tent, the rain seeps in but we have to stay there. No other solution. “

During our report, dozens of people follow us, pulling us by the sleeve. They all want to testify to the lack of food, clean water and the general unsanitary conditions: “There are public toilets, but we cannot access them because people are forcing us to pay to use them. So, to do our business, we have to go to a corner. The water department has to come and help us. “

“The authorities didn’t even come to see us”, concludes another man, thus summarizing the feeling of abandonment felt by these men, women and children.