Background
Late on the afternoon of January 12, 2010, a massive earthquake struck the impoverished country of Haiti 10 miles from the capital of Port-au-Prince, causing catastrophic damage and reducing much of the city to rubble. Two years after the disaster, the country is still trying to recover.
Last updated December 23, 2011
On January 12, 2010 the most powerful earthquake to strike in 200 years hit Haiti, killing more than 220,000 people, injuring more than 300,000 others, and leaving 1.5 million homeless.
Compounding the quake’s severity was the destruction of or damage to most of the ministry and public administration buildings in the capital—Port-au-Prince--including the Presidential Palace, parliament, and law courts. The country also lost more than 20 percent of its civil servants in the disaster.
Then, in October 2010, a second emergency hit: cholera. A waterborne disease that can kill within hours, it soon spread across the country, its march hastened by Haiti’s poor infrastructure. At the end of 2011, Haiti had the world’s highest cholera infection rate, with more than 5 percent of the population having been affected. More than 6,700 Haitians have died as a result of the outbreak.
The poorest country in the western hemisphere, Haiti and its 9.6 million citizens are plagued by political instability and find themselves repeatedly in the path of natural disasters, some of which have been exacerbated by widespread deforestation.
When catastrophe hits, few have the means to recover quickly. Prior to the quake, 72 percent of Haitians were living on less than $2 a day. And many people didn’t have basic services: Only 30 percent of the population of Port-au-Prince had regular access to clean water, and just over 50 percent had access to sanitation before the quake destroyed great swaths of the city.
Two years after, the county continues to face enormous challenges in the disaster’s wake: more than half a million people are still living in tents and under tarps and many Haitians lack access to sufficient food. According to Haiti’s National Food Security Co-ordination nearly one in two people--4.5 million--is food insecure.
In 2010, Oxfam reached more than 500,000 people with its earthquake response program and 700,000 people with cholera prevention activities. In 2011, as our emergency relief efforts have shifted focus toward reconstruction, our work has reached a further 532,000 people in the camps and in the wider community. Moving forward, our programs will focus on recovery and rebuilding in inner-city neighborhoods and rural areas outside Port-au-Prince as we work with existing and new partners to find sustainable solutions to Haiti’s problems.
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