“Urgency Over”

“’Urgent’ relief operations in Haiti are ending as aid deliveries are satisfying most immediate needs, United Nations and U.S. aid officials said. ‘We are out of the urgent phase,’ Dr. Henriette Chamouillet, head of World Health Organization operations in Haiti, told reporters on a videoconference yesterday. French rescuers pulled a teenage girl, moments from death, from under the rubble of a home yesterday, the Associated Press reported, citing Paul Francois-Valette, a French paramedic. International efforts are shifting toward helping sustain Haitians, including the estimated 800,000 residents of the capital Port-au-Prince left homeless by the Jan. 12 quake. About 250,000 people have already left the city for the countryside, and locally grown food is beginning to arrive in the capital, said David Wimhurst, a UN peacekeeping mission spokesman. French rescuers rushed Darlene Etienne, 17, to a military field hospital and then to the French military hospital ship Sirroco, after extricating her from under a collapsed structure in the capital near St. Gerard University, the AP reported.”