Haiti air bridge launched

The first plane of an air bridge ordered by President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ruler of Abu Dhabi, for delivering urgent humanitarian assistance to Haiti's earthquake victims will fly to the Dominican Republic in a couple of day.

A UAE Red Crescent Authority (RCA) team will leave for the Dominican Republic to co-ordinate and oversee relief operations to ensure their prompt delivery to the affected people.

In another development, the RCA is co-ordinating efforts with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to carry out humanitarian programmes that cater for the need of the Haitian front where the international aid agencies are facing logistic challenges in delivery of assistance. The RCA has announced that it had transferred funds to the IFRC in support of its relief operations there.

RCA Chairman Ahmed Al Mazrouie said the aid agency is striving to put the President's directives in place. He said the RCA had set up an emergency room to receive humanitarian appeals and reports on the latest situation in Haiti from its international partners to analyse and assess them in order to draw and implement relief programmes.

He said the RCA's multi-prong relief strategy would include the air bridge, which carries basic relief items such as food, medicines and shelter materials. A team of the RCA will be deployed in the Dominican Republic to receive aid planes and co-ordinate operations of distribution.

It will also assess the situation on the ground with other aid providers for the purpose of dispatching more assistance.

Al Mazrouie affirmed that the RCA was moving in all directions and fronts to mobilise humanitarian efforts so as to improve the living conditions of survivors of Haiti's deadliest quake.

He said the RCA is intensifying its contacts with UAE charity and relief agencies to rally their efforts in order to do an effective, substantial humanitarian work that fits well into the UAE's standing in the global humanitarian scene.

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