Sarah Palin: Helping Haiti this Christmas

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Posted Wednesday by Gov. Palin on Facebook:

Helping Haiti this Christmas

If you are still looking for a cause to donate to this Christmas, allow me to make a suggestion. Todd, Bristol, Greta Van Susteren, and I recently traveled to Haiti to witness first hand the amazing work done by Rev. Franklin Graham’s organization Samaritan’s Purse. Bristol wrote about our experiences on her Facebook page here.

In an effort to fight a deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti, Samaritan’s Purse has flown over a dozen flights carrying vital medical supplies to the two cholera treatment centers it has been running since the start of the outbreak. These centers, run by medical volunteers from the U.S., Canada, and the UK, have helped save the lives of nearly 5,000 patients.

The cholera treatment centers are part of a larger Samaritan’s Purse effort aimed at restoring the human dignity and economic independence of the Haitian people. Since the disastrous earthquake in January of this year, Samaritan’s Purse has spent $29 million on relief, helping more than half a million people by building 10,000 shelters (more than half of the shelters built in Haiti to date have been put up by Samaritan’s Purse); providing non-cholera related medical assistance (including 250 surgeries) to a total of 43,000 patients; providing clean drinking water to more than 75,000 people; and clearing the rubble from 179 building sites.

None of this would have been possible without the generosity of countless small donors. With all the blessings bestowed upon us in this great country of ours, we also have an opportunity to share those blessings with people who are less fortunate. Samaritan’s Purse is doing exactly that – saving lives one person at a time.

If you’d like to support the great work Samaritan’s Purse does in Haiti and around the world, please visit their website.

Below you’ll find some photos of our Haiti visit taken by Greta Van Susteren. They show what we saw at a temporary housing camp, at the cholera clinics in Bercy and Cité Soleil, and at a meeting where we helped to bring smiles to children’s faces by handing out shoeboxes filled with presents as part of Samaritan's Purse’s worldwide Operation Christmas Child.

- Sarah Palin

Greta Van Susteren and her husband, John; Franklin
Graham and his daughter, Cissy; and Todd, Bristol,
and I had the privilege of passing out Samaritan’s
Purse gifts to Haitian children. Volunteers with
Samaritan’s Purse assembled 8 million Christmas
gift boxes to bless children around the world this season!

At a temporary housing camp. Over one million Haitians
have been displaced since January’s earthquake.

Washing clothes in streams they bathe in.

In Samaritan’s Purse’s cholera clinic operated by volunteers.

In the clinic with a baby receiving cholera treatment
in a syringe.

In the clinic with a tiny six-month-old baby with
cholera and pneumonia, a twin who was in the
clinic after his mother died.

Bristol and the six-month-old orphan.

Rev. Franklin Graham and I addressing media in Haiti.

At the end of a day in Haiti, Bristol and I took in the
physical beauty of the country while discussing what
seems like improbable poverty and great malaise in a
country with so much potential.

- JP