Medical staff sent to Haiti by the US Department of Health and Human Services have brought 25 babies into the world in the two weeks since a powerful quake rocked the Caribbean nation, Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Monday.
"In the midst of all of the tragedy, the sorrow and the destruction, our staff has helped to deliver 25 babies," Sebelius said in the opening speech to a symposium on American homeless youth.
"There is a resilience, and life goes on among our neighbors and friends," she said, urging the US and other governments which have mounted a massive relief effort for Haiti to remain committed to the country over the long term.
"We're dealing with a country where one out of two Haitians is under 18. It's a very young country. Most of this tragedy has fallen on young people, and their situation is going to get even more challenging," Sebelius said.
The more than 100 participants in the symposium observed a minute's silence for the victims of the 7.0-magnitude quake that rocked Haiti on January 12.
Much of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, was reduced to rubble by the powerful temblor, which Haitian officials believe claimed around 150,000 lives and left around one million people homeless.
Washington has taken a frontline role in the disaster relief effort, sending in tens of thousands of troops and rescue teams and anchoring a hospital ship, the USS Comfort, offshore to treat injured Haitians.
The US Department of Health and Human Services has five medical teams, a number of surgical teams and mortuary teams on the ground in Haiti, said Sebelius.
"Hospitals have been set up, the USS Comfort has arrived and they are operating full steam ahead.... Thousands of patients have been seen so far," she said.
Copyright 2010 AFP American Edition
