All you need to know about Haiti, the UN and help..right here

TIMES UK

The Haitian people seem to scare aid workers more than Somali warlords, Darfuri Janjawid or Afghan Taleban. Frightened Dutch aid workers abandoned a mission without reaching the collapsed building where people were trapped, and frightened doctors have left their patients unattended.

KUDOS TO CNN AND SANJAY GUPTA WHO REMEMBERS WHAT HE IS- A DOCTOR

The experience of CNN's medical reporter, Dr Sanjay Gupta, is telling. In a makeshift clinic he encountered a Belgian medical team being evacuated in a UN bus. UN "rules of engagement" apparently stopped them providing security for the doctors. The Belgians took most of their medical supplies with them, to keep them out of the claws of robbers.

Dr Gupta and his camera team stayed the night, monitored the abandoned patients' vital signs and continued intravenous drips -- and they were not robbed. Some rescuers are leaning so much toward security that they will allow people to die.
The media are not helping. CNN rules in the rubble. "Outside of a military conflict, this is our biggest international deployment since the tsunami in 2004," according to Tony Maddox, the managing director of CNN International.

If these are the concerns and the acts of those bringing aid, then the US Marines appear to be the best choice for real help. Welcome to bitter reality.

In the end, it's about ammo, storable food, water, medical supplies, and personal security. Otherwise you are dependent on the kindness, risk taking and good will of utter strangers.