Hearts, Hands and Feet for Haiti

Wilton residents joined more than 200 others in a 5k run/walk to highlight Haiti's continued need for help since January's 8.8 magnitude earthquake.

The Town of Ridgefield hosted "Hearts, Hands and Feet for Jacmel, Haiti" on Sunday. Ridgefield Responds, a town-wide effort to help Haiti, organized the event. The proceeds will help the citizens of Jacmel, one of the country's seaside cities.

Danbury Hospital's Friends and Family team raised about $3,500 to help fund a portable medical unit, with operating room, said Dr. Heather Sung, a medical liaison for relief efforts with Ridgefield Responds.

Danbury Hospital already donated several key pieces of medical equipment, including an x-Ray machine, IV pole and pump, EKG machine, blood pressure cuffs, microscope, and vision monitors.

Several Wilton schools have also helped in the past few months. Middlebrook students raised $3,250 through a "Change for Children" coin drive and a chess tournament for Save the Children's Haiti relief and recovery efforts.

Wilton Rotary donated $4,000 to earthquake relief last winter and the Wilton Teen and Trackside Center raised more than $5,000 last February.

These efforts will help Haitians help themselves. That's imperative for the island nation's long-term recovery, wrote Dr. Dominque Bayard in the May issue of New England Journal of Medicine.

Bayard traveled to Haiti six weeks after the January earthquake as part of a team of U.S. physicians and health care professionals. He worked in a hospital in Tabarre, a quarter in the northeast section of Port-au-Prince.

"While international volunteers come and go, the local people will remain the backbone of the recovery process, and integrating them into international relief efforts will be vital," Bayard wrote.