Haiti was spared a direct hit by Hurricane Melissa in October, but the storm’s outer bands brought lethal rain and wind. Officially, 43 people died including 10 children and 13 people remain missing. It was yet another crisis layered onto a country already exhausted by overlapping emergencies and political mayhem.

My wife, who works with UNICEF, travelled through the southern peninsula immediately after the storm to assess the damage across five departments.