December 14, 2016

We're helping provide communities in Haiti the tools to return home & rebuild after Hurricane Matthew

USAID/OFDA

Highlights

WFP reaches 99 percent of Haitians in need of emergency food assistance.

Relief actors facilitate access to safe drinking water for an estimated 744,000 people

Number of suspected cholera cases reported in Grand’Anse and Sud continues to decline.

Key Developments

USAID partner the UN World Food Program (WFP) had provided emergency food assistance to approximately 796,000 people—99 percent of the 806,000 people identified as severely food-insecure—in Haiti’s Grand’Anse, Nippes, and Sud departments as of December 8. To date, USAID/FFP has provided more than $34.6 million—including more than $19.2 million to WFP and more than $15.4 million to the non-governmental organization (NGO) CARE—to meet the critical food needs of hurricane-affected families.

USAID/OFDA has provided nearly $6.3 million to date to provide emergency and transitional shelter assistance to families whose homes were damaged by Hurricane Matthew. As of December 12, USAID/OFDA partners had reached nearly 159,350 hurricane-affected individuals through emergency shelter interventions. In total, response actors had provided shelter assistance to nearly 446,000 people—approximately 74 percent of the 600,000 people in need of emergency shelter support—as of December 4, the UN reports.

As of December 10, humanitarian organizations had facilitated access to safe drinking water for an estimated 744,000 hurricane-affected people, according to the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Sector Working Group—the coordinating body for humanitarian WASH activities, comprising UN agencies, NGOs, and other stakeholders. The total represents approximately 99 percent of the 750,000 people targeted for WASH assistance by the humanitarian community.

EMERGENCY FOOD ASSISTANCE AND RELIEF COMMODITIES

As of December 8, WFP and implementing organizations had provided first-round emergency food distributions to approximately 796,000 people—99 percent of the 806,000 people identified as severely food-insecure—in Grand’Anse, Nippes, and Sud. WFP and partners recently commenced second-round distributions, which have reached approximately 120,000 people to date; in addition, WFP is providing supplementary food assistance to an estimated 7,300 children ages 6–59 months and 100 pregnant and lactating women.

To date, USAID/FFP has provided WFP with more than $19 million—approximately 71 percent of the $27 million the UN agency has received for emergency food assistance in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. USAID/FFP has contributed more than $34.6 million total to meet hurricane-affected families’ urgent food needs.

In addition to humanitarian food assistance, livelihoods assistance is required over the medium-term to increase household access to key agricultural inputs for the winter and spring harvests, USAID/FFP reports. Given vulnerable families’ reliance on agricultural labor to meet household food needs, successful harvests are critical to preventing the deterioration of food security conditions over the long-term in hurricane-affected areas.

As of December 10, USAID/OFDA-supplied relief commodities—including blankets, hygiene kits, kitchen sets, and plastic sheeting—had reached more than 364,100 people in Grand’Anse, Nippes, Nord-Ouest, Ouest, Sud, and Sud-Est departments. The figure represents approximately 45 percent of the 805,000 people targeted for assistance via emergency relief supplies. With more than $6 million in USAID/OFDA support, the WFP-led special logistics operation continues to coordinate the delivery of relief commodities to hurricane-affected households.

HEALTH, NUTRITION, AND WASH

Screenings conducted by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Government of Haiti (GoH) Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP), and nutrition partners in November found elevated levels of acute malnutrition in nine hurricane-affected communes, including six in Sud and three in Grand’Anse, according to the UN. The USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) health advisor notes that these screenings do not provide a representative survey of post-hurricane nutrition levels, particularly given hurricane-affected communities’ increased access to health care and nutrition screenings. To prevent and treat acute malnutrition, USAID/OFDA is supporting NGO partners to implement infant and young child feeding in emergencies (IYCF-E) programs, including the promotion of exclusive breast feeding and complementary feeding initiatives, as well as conduct malnutrition screenings and referrals. The DART, in coordination with health partners, continues to monitor the nutrition situation in affected areas.

The uptick in the number of suspected cholera cases reported in Grand’Anse and Sud in the wake of Hurricane Matthew continues to decline, with the GoH MSPP reporting 186 new suspected cholera cases in Grand’Anse and Sud between December 4 and 10—a decrease from the 285 suspected cases reported in the two departments the previous week.

To mitigate the continued risk of increased cholera transmission during the ongoing rainy season, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) staff are supporting the GoH MSPP to perform cholera-related epidemiology and surveillance efforts, including case investigation and specimen collection and testing. CDC is also building capacity at the regional laboratory in Sud’s Les Cayes commune through ongoing trainings for laboratory staff, sample collection trainings for nurses, and the provision of laboratory equipment for culturing samples. In addition, CDC is implementing an integrated laboratory surveillance system—enabling laboratory technicians to test specimens for cholera and identify the cholera strain of positive specimens—in Les Cayes.

USAID/OFDA is supporting UNICEF with more than $560,000 to conduct protection and WASH interventions in Grand’Anse. Through its implementing partners, UNICEF recently established three mobile water treatment units in Grand’Anse’s Jeremie commune, facilitating access to potable water for an additional 19,000 people, the UN reports. As of December 10, the humanitarian community had facilitated access to safe drinking water for an estimated 744,000 people—approximately 99 percent of the 750,000 people targeted for WASH assistance, according to the WASH Sector Working Group

USAID/OFDA has provided more than $8.2 million to date for the provision of primary health care, cholera treatment, and WASH services in hurricane-affected areas. In addition to assisting UNICEF and seven NGO partners to conduct WASH interventions in Grand’Anse and Sud, USAID/OFDA is supporting Solidarités to provide WASH support—such as conducting hygiene promotion campaigns, distributing hygiene kits, and rehabilitating damaged WASH infrastructure—for an estimated 140,000 people in Nippes. Hurricane Matthew damaged approximately 48 of 58 water systems—including a major system in Petite-Riveriere-de-Nippes commune—in Nippes, according to local authorites. To address gaps prior to planned rehabilitation activities, Solidarités is operating a surface water treatment plant, providing safe drinking water for approximately 500–750 people per day, in Petite-Riviere-de-Nippes. Solidarités also conducts bulk chlorination of water for distribution to local households and manages a water distribution point supplying approximately 48,000 liters of potable water per day, sufficient to meet the basic water needs of an estimated 6,400 people. Additionally, Solidarités is bolstering coordination among WASH sector partners in Nippes through information management support to department-level water authorities.

SHELTER AND SETTLEMENTS

DART staff report that displaced people in Grand’Anse and Sud continue to vacate temporary shelters to return to their areas of origin or other host communities. Approximately 360 households—an estimated 1,800 people—remained at 10 shelters in Sud’s Les Cayes, Port-Salut, and Torbeck communes as of December 6, according to the UN. The DART is encouraging response partners to prioritize shelter repairs for the most vulnerable households to facilitate voluntary returns to communities of origin.

USAID/OFDA partner J/P Haitian Relief Organization (J/P HRO) continues to support the return and resettlement of displaced populations in Jeremie commune’s Jeremie town. As of December 12, J/P HRO had provided USAID/OFDA-procured plastic sheeting, repair kits, and technical assistance to nearly 3,600 people in Jeremie.

USAID/OFDA partner Save the Children/U.S. (SC/US) provided plastic sheeting and technical guidance on durable shelter repairs to approximately 16,770 people in Grand’Anse’s Beaumont commune and Sud’s Camp Perrin and Torbeck communes through its first-phase shelter response, which concluded on December 3. SC/US also distributed school kits to more than 2,930 children in the three communes. The NGO is targeting approximately 11,000 people in Beaumont, Camp Perrin, and Torbeck for assistance through second-phase shelter interventions, consisting of more robust shelter repairs using corrugated galvanized iron and nails.

As of December 12, USAID/OFDA partner Catholic Relief Services (CRS) had reached approximately 56,600 people with emergency shelter support, including plastic sheeting and fixing kits. Cumulatively, USAID/OFDA’s nine shelter partners reported reaching nearly 159,350 people through emergency shelter interventions as of December 12. In total, response actors had provided shelter assistance to nearly 446,000 hurricane-affected people as of December 4, the UN reports. As relief actors transition from emergency response to early recovery interventions, USAID/OFDA is coordinating with USAID/Haiti on longer-term shelter programming to bolster hurricane-affected households’ resilience to future shocks.

EARLY RECOVERY AND LIVELIHOODS

To support longer-term food security and livelihoods, response actors have distributed agricultural seeds to an estimated 8,000 households, the UN reports. Additionally, response actors have provided more than $2 million to an estimated 33,000 households—more than 164,000 people—through cash-based programming.

USAID/OFDA and other donors are supporting J/P HRO to conduct cash-for-work interventions—such as clearing debris—in coordination with WASH and other programming. As of December 10, J/P HRO had assisted more than 134,100 people in Grand’Anse and Sud through cash-for-work activities, including bridge and street repairs and road clearing, the UN reports.

OTHER HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE

In late November, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released a revised flash appeal to reflect both delivered humanitarian assistance and the outstanding critical needs of hurricane-affected people in Haiti. The revised appeal requests $139 million—an increase of approximately $19 million from the initial appeal, launched in October—and seeks to provide emergency food assistance to 806,000 people; emergency relief commodities to 805,000 people; and health and WASH assistance to 750,000 people, among other interventions. As of December 14, international donors had contributed more than $75.9 million—approximately 55 percent of the requested total—toward the revised flash appeal, according to OCHA.