"Our houses were crushed and our businesses destroyed. So we came to Cange."
Posted on Jan 21, 2010
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The floor of a nearby church in Cange is currently being used as a triage center. |
Even before the earthquake and its aftershocks left people injured and afraid, without homes or a livelihood in the flattened capital city, PIH’s sociomedical complex in Cange was already providing round-the-clock care to people from all over Haiti’s central plateau. Now, with a massive influx of people fleeing Port-au-Prince, our 104 bed facility is overflowing: the church is serving as a triage center and the school as recovery room.
Seeking both medical treatment and refuge from the destruction in the capitol, people are arriving in Cange at all hours of the day and night. Some are people returning to the countryside, having migrated to Port au Prince in search of education or employment years ago. Others simply have nowhere else to go. "Our houses were crushed and our businesses destroyed. So we came to Cange," said one man who arrived in a bus with 12 relatives, including his mother in law who was critically injured.
Read a Wall Street Journal article on the migration to Cange and the help being provided there.