We've all donated and the money continues to pour in. Corporations are donating millions of dollars each; individuals are donating a very high average amount per person; the US government is starting with aid of $100MM. But the one thing I notice over and over again in the interviews with the Haitians: they all say they are not getting the aid.
It has been 4 days since the 7.0+ earthquake hit the populous center of Port Au Prince. Yet the images on CNN, on the Net, and on our phones is the same: People in desperate need of help and are not getting it. We also see images of aid workers from around the world pouring into Haiti to help. These are the same images we saw in Indonesia with the tsunami a few years ago where the death toll was also 200,000+.
I look at this much like the Institute of Medicine's view of US Healthcare: The people are great and the money is there; however the systems and the processes are broken. We have to look deeply at how we deliver aid to poor (and rich countries). We have to, with the deep aid of data, look at what are the bottleneck's in large calamities such as Haiti where so many people are feared dead. I know people are trying their hardest and good energy is there, but the results still arent there. The director the UN aid program said on NPR that it is impossible to get the aid there any faster. I disagree: if we look at the data and find the bottlenecks, we can find how to do this.
As the population of the earth continues to bloom, the natural disasters will grow in both their frequency and in their calamity. If you believe in global warming, this will only exacerbate the problem. They will continue to happen both rich countries and poor countries - but the poor countries will not be able to prepare well and the world will have to help. We must review both the systems and the processes, augmented with technology, to figure out how to get the world's generosity to the people in need much, much faster.
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