12 December, 2016
ANSE-A-PITRES, Haiti, December 2, 2016. – With funding support from the Deutsche Bank, the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) launched a one-year intervention to deliver emergency health assistance, through the provision of medical care, clean drinking water, nutrition and preventive health education aims to control infections and diseases among and improve the health and well-being of 3,000 deportees from the Dominican Republic living in unsanitary conditions inside makeshift settlement camps in Haiti’s Southeast Department border commune of Anse-a-Pîtres.
In 2014, the Dominican Republic passed an immigration law calling for the deportation of all undocumented people living and working in its territory, affecting more than 250,000 undocumented Haitian immigrants and Dominicans of Haitian origin. The immigration crisis stem from a 2013 constitutional change that stripped citizenship away from Dominican-born children of foreign parents – mostly of Haitian descent. The ruling was also applied retroactively to 1929, sparking international outcry that it, according to international experts, would leave thousands stateless.
To help alleviate their plight, BRA partnered with the P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water program and local groups to organize 10 community health promoters to distribute 300,000 P&G water purifier packets; provide medical care, food and medicines, and preventive health education around water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and other health-related issues including HIV, Cholera, Zika, water-borne infections and pre/post natal care.
