Healthcare worker tells of time in shattered Haiti

Tracy Eyre, who works in the outpatients department at Scunthorpe General Hospital, was the only English volunteer taking part in the five-week project in the city of Croix-des-Bouquets, which is home to thousands of displaced people who are now living in camps.

Miss Eyre, 45, spent most of her time working in orphanages, as well as spending one day a week with UNICEF working on a database to try to establish what schools in the country were still standing and how badly damaged they were.

She shared her living quarters with snakes, rats and spiders and had little respite from the searing heat and dirt, but still found the challenge rewarding.

She said: "It was hard. I hated not being clean and being unable to sleep but it was the best experience ever.

"It was certainly back to basics as I lived in a tent. We had electricity at night for an hour and a half if we were lucky and we sometimes managed a two-minute shower if we had managed to collect enough water; more often than not we went without."

Miss Eyre said the country was still struggling to recover from the effects of the earthquake nearly a year on.

"The local towns, including the capital, are filled with concertinaed buildings in varying states of collapse, but the country is too poor to pull them down and do anything with them so they are left there as a reminder of the earthquake," she said.

"The mess and the smell are unimaginable. The streets are lined with litter; people use them as latrines and children are running around with no shoes on."

One of the most distressing parts of the trip was visiting a camp for displaced people.

Miss Eyre said: "It was a sea of mud and faces. They looked at us expecting us to help but we just couldn't; not that many people.

"We all felt so helpless; it was terrible and something I will never forget."

She added: "These people's lives are going to be spent in tents, living in poverty for a lifetime. There is very little hope that things will change for the better any time soon."