Reach of faith

Even after witnessing the devastation in Haiti firsthand, Richard Alderfer said it’s difficult to understand just how much help is still needed.

“It’s hard to comprehend and realize the people you’re seeing lived through [the earthquake] and lost people there,” the physician said Thursday.

Alderfer spent about a month providing daily medical care to more than 100 refugees in “tent cities” around Port-au-Prince.

“We traveled from place to place, setting up mobile medical clinics under trees, scrounging for chairs and tables,” Alderfer said.

In addition to injuries, Alderfer said anxiety and lack of clean water and food contributed to many patients’ ailments, most notably abdominal pain.

“I’m not sure how Haiti is going to recover,” he said. “The people are still very vulnerable. We didn’t have rain while I was there and when it comes it will be difficult, causing problems with malaria and infectious disease.”

Two days after returning from the distressed island, Alderfer and about 20 other volunteers assembled supply kits as part of a relief effort organized by Springdale Mennonite Church.

The group plans to ship 1,400 five-gallon buckets filled with personal health and hygiene items to victims, said Danny Showalter, project organizer. Bath and laundry soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes are bound for Haiti along with bath towels, combs, fingernail clippers, bandages and sanitary pads.

“It’s a way to physically see how you’re helping and what’s going down there,” Showalter said.

The United Nations launched a new appeal for nearly $1.5 billion Thursday to help the 3 million Haitians affected by last month’s devastating earthquake. More than 1.2 million Haitians need emergency shelter and urgent sanitation facilities and at least 2 million need food, according to the U.N. The Jan. 12 earthquake killed more than 200,000 people and left 1.2 million homeless.

Min Wenger said having visited Haiti before the earthquake made the project especially meaningful to her.

“It definitely adds to my excitement about helping,” she said. “They’re such wonderful people.”

Alderfer said he is pleased to see the momentum of relief efforts continue.

“You don’t read as much about it in the news,” he said. “Sometimes with tragedies like this, when it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.