Help Is Coming, But Hard to Know If It's Right Kind

With what rescuers call the “golden 48 hours” for finding survivors in the rubble of the Haiti earthquake elapsed, the troubling question arises of whether the medical help flowing to the island will be what’s most needed. Rescue efforts have become more coordinated since the slapdash response to the 2004 tsunami, officials tell the Washington Post, but Haiti’s poor medical system and already-unhealthy populace make any precise calculation tough.

For instance, it’s now too late for the kinds of intensive-care medicine survivors pulled from long stints under wreckage would need. And even sending less-specialized personnel, medicine and equipment is a problem in Haiti, notes one expert: “There is no infrastructure on the ground to help. So if you send in a plane fully loaded but expect someone on the ground to help unload it, you are going to find it is impossible.”
(More Haiti earthquake stories.)