AIDS Issues Update: Charles King Blogs: Features:
Thanks to Your Help, Delta Offers Quick Action on Haiti Baggage Policy
Thanks everyone! Because of the calls, e-mails and tweets from Housing Works supporters, Delta has quickly pledged to help Housing Works deliver relief aid to Haiti via New York’s JFK airport.
Delta Director of External Affairs Scarlet Pressley Brown called Housing Works President and CEO Charles King today and informed him that Delta would be willing to transport relief supplies that had to be left behind at JFK airport today because of unexpected new baggage limitations. Delta also offered to assist Housing Works and the groups with which it collaborates in the transport of relief aid to Haiti in the future.
“Delta is committed to supporting the relief effort and we will consistently do all that we can to support agencies trying to get relief to Haiti,” Brown said.
King was happy about Delta’s swift action. “I applaud Delta for recognizing the urgent importance of rebuilding Haiti and helping us deliver critical help to Haitian families and people living with HIV,” King said.
This afternoon, Housing Works initiated a phone, email and twitter zap asking people demand that Delta allow Haiti aid workers to bring six bags apiece on each flight with no extra charges.
Up until today Delta’s JFK operations had been allowing relief workers to bring six bags with no extra fees when they showed documentation of the relief supplies. However, this morning a relief worker from Housing Works and a relief worker from Diaspora Community Services on their way to Haiti via Santo Domingo had to leave behind eight bags of critical supplies such as hydrating liquids, syringes, pain medication, intravenous medications and gloves at Delta’s JFK check-in gates.
Housing Works and Diaspora Community Services both have long-standing ties to Haitian AIDS and health care groups. Immediately after the earthquake, in response to requests from AIDS organizations in Haiti, Housing Works, Diaspora Community Services, Caribbean Women’s Health Association and the respected international organization Aid for AIDS, banded together to set up two HIV clinics and re-open a family health clinic in Port-au-Prince sponsored by Diaspora Community Services.
While international emergency relief organizations are doing incredible work, Housing Works, Diaspora Community Services, Caribbean Women’s Health Association and Aid for AIDS are delivering emergency medicine with the ultimate goal of helping rebuild HIV and family health care in Haiti for the long term. Haiti already has the worst HIV prevalence rate in the Western hemisphere. Approximately two percent of Haitians are living with HIV, but most of Port-au-Prince’s HIV clinics were destroyed in this month’s earthquake. Without quick action, millions more Haitians are certain to become infected with the HIV virus, and millions of Haitians living with the disease will die.
King has been writing a poignant blog about the experience of setting up the clinics.
Read more about Housing Works’ relief efforts and consider donating
Your inside source for in-depth activism news is updated daily by Staff Writer, Julie Turkewitz
