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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Dead lie in mass graves
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Workers are carving out mass graves on a hillside north of Haiti's capital, using earth-movers to bury 10,000 people in a single day, even as relief workers warn Haitians are still dying of injuries from the Jan. 12 quake for lack of medical care.
Clinics have 12-day waiting lists for patients, crushed arms and legs are festering and makeshift camps that have sprung up in parks, streets and vacant lots now house an estimated 500,000 people, many in need of food, water and a doctor. "The next health risk could include outbreaks of diarrhea, respiratory tract infections and other diseases among hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in overcrowded camps with poor or nonexistent sanitation," said Dr. Greg Elder, deputy operations manager for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti.
The death toll is estimated at 200,000, according to Haitian government figures, with 80,000 buried in mass graves. The commission now estimates two million homeless.
In in the sparsely populated wasteland of Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, burial workers said the macabre task of handling the never-ending flow of bodies was traumatizing.
Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of the U.S. Southern Command running Haiti's airports, said Thursday 1,400 flights are on a waiting list for slots at the Port-au-Prince airport.
-- The Associated Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 22, 2010 A17
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