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More Swiss aid prepares for Haiti missions

A third cargo aircraft from Switzerland has arrived in the Dominican Republic to help victims of the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12.

The aircraft is carrying 105 tonnes of aid goods to Haiti.

Toni Frisch, deputy director-general of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has just returned from Haiti and said that despite the difficult conditions, he could report a positive result about Swiss emergency aid.

But he warned: “Such a catastrophe is by its very definition chaos.”

Switzerland has around 50 people on the Haiti mission. Frisch said that an important focus apart from medical care was taking care of those without shelter.

By Monday, Swiss medical teams had performed 170 operations, according to coordinator Olivier Hagon.

Hagon, who has now returned home, said the small Swiss medical team had been extremely flexible and worked around the clock in what were at times “mad conditions”.

swissinfo.ch and agencies

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