Haiti Case Study - The Department of Global Health and Social ...

of lowest common denominator, and at their best, only served as platforms for
information exchange in the early phase.” 69
76. Some Haitian officials viewed the cluster system mechanism with scepticism because
they perceived it as a way to create a parallel authority to the six sector-based government
run working groups created the day after the earthquake. “Why have a government if you
have clusters funded and led by foreign agencies and beholden only to their donors?” noted
one participant. 70 The fact that some cluster meetings were conducted in English rather than
French further alienated Haitian government officials. Eventually agreement was reached
that a Haitian official would chair each cluster meeting and the lead agency would play a
supporting role. 71
77. Another challenge was negotiating how multiple military organizations—MINUSTAH
and particularly the US military—would interface at the strategic and operational level.
Developing lines of authority and carving out scopes of work between bilateral military
response forces and the peacekeeping mission was an issue in the first days after the
earthquake, but was resolved relatively quickly. A detailed review of the colossal US
response effort documented many of the struggles inherent in establishing internal lines of
authority and pushing massive amounts of resources through fragmented, weak, or
understaffed institutional structures. As one interviewee in the review commented, getting
resources delivered from the US to Haiti was like “pushing a bowling ball through a hose”. 72
Another example involved the US military, which worked hard to comply with the plans of
civilian policy makers, but struggled to obtain guidance for every effort. “The US military had
10,000 responders in the field, [USAID] had 34. The military was simply able to outrun
everyone else,” remarked one US official. 73
INFORMATION GENERATING AND SHARING MECHANISMS
What were information generating and sharing mechanisms that allowed the security community to best
participate in health system strengthening?
78. Disaster responders lacked information regarding need assessment and where and
how to respond. Much of the first response was based on assumptions and estimation which
led to a concentration of aid provision focused on the capital, Port-au-Prince, and information
which could guide the response in rural areas was not available.
79. For their part, security forces were able to collect relevant information quickly for the
overall need assessments but it seemed that data sharing between the security and
humanitarian community was inhibited by lack of both formal exchange mechanisms and an
understanding of how specific information could be of value to others.
80. New communication technologies suggest opportunities for improved situational
awareness and some of these were present in the earthquake response. In particular,
satellite imagery from drones and satellites, and mapping earthquake-affected areas using
cell phones were successful techniques in generating detailed maps in Haiti. Other tools
such as social media networks, crowd sourcing for need assessments and mapping cell
phone data to capture migration tendencies of displaced people were experimented with
during the response, with mixed success. Information from such tools would have been
useful to plan location, size and capability of field hospitals that need to be mounted, and
food/water/aid distributed.
81. Clusters were traditionally the place where stakeholders shared information and
received an overview of the situation but as transportation was a big issue only nearby
organizations could afford to attend and the effort was balanced with the value of information
provided.
82. The Haiti cholera outbreak showed how important it is for militaries to be tuned into
epidemiologic data and health system functioning as a whole. The need for better situation
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