International relations

SA rescue team returns from Haiti

25 January 2010

The first Rescue South Africa team arrived back home on Saturday as the country prepared to send follow-up teams with further medical assistance and other humanitarian aid to earthquake-stricken Haiti.

The team of 40, mainly comprising medical staff and engineers, had taken 10 tons of search and rescue equipment as well as medical supplies on their mission to help with immediate search and rescue operations in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.

A second rescue team from South African charity organisation Gift of the Givers, led by Durban University of Technology emergency rescue lecturer Sageshin Naguran and consisting of six advanced life support paramedics and four doctors, arrived in Port-au-Prince last Wednesday.

The first Gift of the Givers team, along with their Mexican counterparts, took part in the dramatic rescue of a 70-year-old woman earlier last week, seven days after the quake struck. Rescue workers said it was a miracle that she had survived.

On the weekend, Haiti's government called off the search-and-rescue phase of the quake relief effort, after 132 people were pulled out alive from under the rubble. Haiti said on Friday that more than 110 000 people were confirmed as killed, making the magnitude 7.0 quake the deadliest on record in the Americas.

Saul Molobi, spokesman for South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation, told BuaNews on Friday that South Africa would be sending a second team of professionals, including forensic pathologists, to participate in the identification of bodies and to provide the survivors with medical assistance and other humanitarian aid.

"We are phasing the aid assistance in three phases, including the immediate search and rescue phase, [followed by] the identification of bodies, where local forensic pathologists will be sent to participate in the identification of bodies," Molobi said.

"The third and last phase will consist of humanitarian aid, in which government will work with non-governmental organisations such as the Gift of the Givers in order to provide humanitarian assistance where possible."

SAinfo reporter and BuaNews