‘A forgotten disaster’: earthquake-hit Haitians left to fend for themselves

With rural areas of the country left to suffer, aid workers fear funds are drying up as global compassion fatigue sets in

David Nazaire, a 45-year-old coffee farmer from Beaumont, a small village in rural southern Haiti, was getting ready to harvest when an earthquake struck his home and livelihood. Much of the farming infrastructure - as well as nearby homes, schools and churches - was damaged or completely destroyed. A month later, he and thousands of rural Haitians - those most severely affected by the tremor - are still waiting for relief, and are not expecting it to arrive soon.

The earthquake didn't destroy our crops, but it did take everything else," Nazaire says, outside a neighbour's house, now a pile of rubble beneath plastic roof tiles supported by the remnants of concrete walls. We were just getting ready to harvest, but that's lost now."