We all would like to see a brighter future for Haiti and I hope this conference will serve to explore many views. Respect for human rights freedom and the rule of law must be established in the poorest nation in our hemisphere.

If you look just at the decades after 1934 you know it's hard to point to really inspired and positive support from outside of Haiti to Haiti and much easier to point to either small-minded or downright mean-spirited policies.

I will work to bring peace to everyone - whatever economic level - as long as you are Haitian.

Canadians have been very generous toward Haiti after the earthquake and thanks to you our most vulnerable people have received food drinkable water shelter medical care and education. For that we are extremely grateful.

Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious perhaps a weakness as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else.

Civil and political rights are critical but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.

I wanted to contribute my time myself my knowledge my love because Haiti is my everything.

I am not suggesting that all those missionary organizations working in Haiti should pack up and go home but I am urging them to understand that Haiti does not need clever Americans with newly contrived schemes for saving their country.

It's time for Haitians to have access to health care. It's time to open our borders to the Haitian diaspora open our markets to the world. It's time to open our country to potential investors.

While Haiti has recently celebrated more than 200 years of independence from French colonial rule the citizens of the island remain vulnerable to poverty poor health and political chaos.

If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.

The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti they're major problems in Haiti but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems.

Paul Farmer has helped to build amazing health care system in one of the poorest areas of Haiti. He founded Partners in Health which serves the destitute and the sick in many parts of the world from Haiti to Boston and from Russia to Peru.

I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age he wanted to be an Episcopal priest because he so admired his priest a black man from someplace called Haiti.