'EIGHTH ISLAND' INCREASES AID TO HAITI

Translated from the Bolivarian News Agency, Thursday January 21 2010

VENEZUELA sent more personnel and food aid to the earthquake-stricken Caribbean nation of Haiti on Thursday.

A contingent of 48 aid workers, including the the 51st Simón Bolívar medical battalion, firefighters and civil defence and disaster management personnel departed from Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía north of the capital Caracas.

They relieved fellow Venezuelan humanitarian workers who had been aiding survivors for 12 days.

The mission was accompanied by 12 tons of food and other material aid.

Deputy foreign minister for Latin America and the Caribbean Francisco Arias Cárdenas was at the airport to see the team off.

He said that the aid workers would mainly be deployed in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, which had been worst affected by the disaster.

Mr Arias added that Venezuela's existing literacy campaign in Haiti would continue as part of the continuing “efforts of transformation” by Venezuela and neighbouring Caribbean country Cuba.

Cuban doctors and nurses were working in Haiti before the catastrophe and have manned the only intact medical centre in the capital, coordinating Spanish humanitarian volunteers.

Venezuela is known colloquially in the Canaries as the 'eighth island'. Many colonists of the South American nation came from the archipelago and the islands host a large Venezuelan immigrant community.

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