Notes from the Field | Interview of CARE's Steve Hollingworth by CNN Situation Room's Wolf Blitzer

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Interview of CARE's Steve Hollingworth by CNN Situation Room's Wolf Blitzer

Posted by: Staci Dixon on January 21, 2010 at 11:26AM EST

On Wednesday, January 20, 2009, CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviewed Steve Hollingworth, CARE USA's chief operating officer and Executive vice president of global operations. The interview was aired on CNN's The Situation Room. Check back for video.

Here is the transcript:

Steve Hollingworth,
Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, Global Operations

BLITZER: We're hearing chilling warnings from doctors in Haiti, if they don't get medicine and surgical [transcript skips] and they don't get it very soon many more earthquake victims will die. We are joined by Steve Hollingworth; he's the chief operating officer for CARE USA.

Steve, thanks very much for doing what you're doing. How desperate is the situation right now?

STEVE HOLLINGWORTH, CARE USA'S COO: Wolf, I'm personally getting more and more concerned by the day, to tell you the truth. This has been a major body blow to Haiti, and, you know, we're in now the second week of the response and the international community really is mobilizing very quickly, but the devastation has been so profound here, and it's hit in such critical areas for the country that I'm getting worried.

BLITZER: What's your -- what are your immediate fears?

HOLLINGWORTH: Well, you know, the major fear is, of course, we're in the second week and the resilience period is coming to an end. Local communities are able to cope for some time, a week, ten days, with their own resources, with the support of neighbors who may have more resources than they do, but we really [transcript skips] humanitarian effort begins to stick on the wall here and have a big effect, and there was a huge effort going on. There's big success in getting things into the port. The real challenge now is following through and having a series of successful distributions going on all over the country and that's a challenge for a lot of reasons.

BLITZER: Because so many people are worried that those who survived this earthquake might still die because of a lack of medical equipment or medicines or food or water for that matter, is that your immediate need right now to keep these people alive?

HOLLINGWORTH: It is. We're focused absolutely on maintaining the health of the population. The first critical intervention is with water and making sure diarrheal diseases are under control. You know, the issue with that is basically there's so much infection in the air with all of the dead bodies and with the open defecation of nearly 1 million people in refugee camps here that, you know, that's not a good solution for anybody. We have to take emergency steps such as small sashets for water purification and taking steps to distribute very quickly bottled water and then making sure we're following through and setting up small-scale water infrastructure in 116 camps that people are in.

We have a very major activity with care going on in the area of Léogâne, where we're establishing water bladders and filling them so the communities can begin to take water, but that's the first area. The second big concern we have, of course, is getting out emergency supplies of food and blankets and shelter, tarps [transcript skips] and we're carrying out major distributions in four areas, including two here in Port-au-Prince with CARE. And we're also very concerned about the medical condition that women are facing. The health infrastructure here is really absolutely overwhelmed. Six hospitals are gone, right? And trauma, obstetrics care and, in particular, tetanus really are becoming big worries for us.

BLITZER: Well, we want to wish you good luck. We know you're doing critically important work, CARE USA and all of these humanitarian relief organizations are on the scene. Thank you so much, Steve Hollingworth, good luck to you. We know you've got a huge mission.

Send This | Categories: Aid, CARE, Disaster, Earthquake, Emergency, Haiti, Haiti Earthquake, IDP, Natural Disaster, Poverty, Relief, Women

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