Women at forefront of food-distribution effort in Haiti

UN officials said they are still far short of reaching all of the Haiti earthquake victims estimated to need food.

The UN World Food Programme and its partners, including World Vision, borrowed an approach that has worked in other disaster zones.

The agencies fanned out across Port-au-Prince, distributing coupons to be redeemed for bags of rice sites across the city. The coupons were given mainly to women, the elderly and the disabled.

Men could redeem coupons for women who were busy taking care of children or who otherwise could not make it.

“Our experience around the world is that food is more likely to be equitably shared in the household if it is given to women,” WFP spokesman Marcus Prior said at the stadium, now a sprawling encampment of families left homeless by the quake.

Officials targeted women because they are primary caregivers in most households and are less likely to be aggressive in aid lines.

Many Haitians agreed.

Chery Frantz, a 35-year-old father of four who lives in a ravine near one distribution centre, said men are more likely to try to sell the donated rice.

“Women won’t do that because they’re more responsible,” Mr Frantz said.

Bags of rice will be given out daily for the next two weeks to hold the city until longer-term food efforts can take hold.

Workers are handing out 1,700 rations daily at each location. Each bag is intended to help feed a family of six for two weeks with about half the calories they need each day.

WFP said that by the end of the day it had distributed some 377 metric tons of rice to more than 100,000 at nine sites.

Also, the White House said it was resuming the military airlift of critically injured earthquake victims, having received assurances that additional medical capacity exists in US hospitals.

The flights had stopped four days earlier, worrying doctors in Haiti who said hundreds would die without specialised care. Since then, relief groups were forced to use expensive private jets.

The Boston-based aid group Partners in Health arranged for one such plane to fly a five-year-old tetanus victim, a 14-month-old boy with pneumonia and a baby boy with third-degree burns to Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia.