Readers' letters

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VITAL AID WORK WILL GO ON

Dear Ed, — Vital aid continues to be delivered to the survivors of the Haiti earthquake thanks to the generous response of the people of South Lanarkshire.

Money donated to SCIAF (the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund) is providing tents, blankets and tarpaulins for shelter and fortnightly food rations of lentils, oil and high protein bulgar wheat to the most vulnerable among the many thousands of people living in temporary camps.

In the weeks following the disaster the people of South Lanarkshire gave over 60,700 to support the SCIAF Haiti Earthquake Appeal, including 22,800 from East Kilbride, 13,900 from Hamilton, 7,200 from Blantyre, 7,100 from Uddingston, 3,400 from Bothwell, 2,300 from Carluke, 1,400 from Biggar and 685 from Lanark.

Over 1,144,000 was donated across Scotland to support SCIAF's emergency response including 75,000 from the Scottish Government.

When the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on January 12 over 230,000 people were killed and over one million left homeless.

SCIAF's partner on the ground, Caritas Haiti (part of the global network of Catholic aid agencies Caritas Internationalis), was able to quickly distribute food and water from existing stocks in and around the capital Port-au-Prince.

Three operating theatres were repaired in a major hospital and six mobile clinics provided to care for the injured.

Within the first six weeks the Caritas programme had distributed food to 598,800 people in camps, hygiene kits to 46,900 people, family tents to 2,720, emergency shelter materials to 63,700 people and medical care to over 33,500 was also provided.

Now that the world's media has left Haiti, SCIAF will continue to provide immediate aid and long term support to help the people of Haiti make a full recovery.

I would like to thank the generous people of South Lanarkshire for helping SCIAF to provide practical aid to many thousands of people left injured, homeless and in need following the devastating earthquake which destroyed large parts of Haiti in January.