Why does food aid take so long to distribute?

Living conditions in these countries mean that storing anything is impractical. Most people scratch an existence from day to day and drinking water is amongst the rarest of commodities for some of them. The concept of having even enough for each day, let alone storage for the future, is competely alien. Then there is the question of storage containers and space.

Underlying this problem is that the authorities and governments in those countries are incompetent, corrupt, and unconcerned, relying on handouts from the West time after time, and you can see the problem. They are unable and uninterested in helping themselves, and always will be while there are richer countries around to provide handouts, which is why 'aid' is a bad idea.

Sally, not all of them would be washed away, but given the choice when very thirsty, what would you drink? the muddy water that is everywhere? or open a plastic bottle of water that is floating on top,

These countries around the world know that they are prone to disasters, but make little preparation for them, earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, flooding, can all cut off clean water supplies to large areas,

If these countries told their people to store water, then at least cholera, tythoid, etc wouldn't be as bad when disaster strikes, as people wouldn't be drinking sewage contaminated water.

Discarded plastic bottles are abundant on this planet.

It's amazing how nature slaps humanity in the face now and then just to remind us who's boss.

As for clean drinking water. Rolls of cellophane and ice cream tubs are all that are required!

The floods were too powerful and too sudden. Great "walls of water" washed away homes and businesses. People were lucky to escape with their lives. Bottles of water would have just been washed away too.

Now thousands of pakistani people don't have any clean drinking water, and probably won't have access to any for weeks,

These type of places are prone to certain types of disaster which wipe out the supply of clean water, why not have a world wide memorandum to get people to keep 20 litres of water stored in empty plastic pop bottles?

So simple, so easy.

Why is it only Western countries that are flocking to help Haiti? I don't see China or India helping much even though they spend a lot on nuclear weapons and space programmes

I suggested that every country in an earthquake zone should get their people to fill up a load of empty plastic pop bottles with water, and store it close by,

In a few days time some people of Chile will have to drink dirty water, as there won't be any clean supplies, the lack of drinking water there will be on the news, a simple solution.

First Haiti, and now Chili, the Hadron collider has just been started up, coincidence?

I agree with what "Fairy" says, there is too much red tape, I was watching CNN about a week after it happened and a reporter asked the American military commander who was in charge at the airport if he knew that hunderds of people camped outside the airport had no food and no water and he said he was not aware of that ! so what chance did anyone else have. The Americans seemed to be more interested in poseing about in their Hummers. A reporter filmed an Israeli field hospital treating people and doing surgery and he said the Americans have not got one field hospital up and running! yet the Israelis came from the other side of the world and have their hospital up and running, he said he was ashamed to be American ! But its not just them, its other organizations too. While they count their boxes and make stupid excuses people are dying !!

There is no excuse for how long it is taking for the aid to reach these people. You have individuals and small groups out there getting the job done with a lot less than what the U.N. , various militaries and large aid groups have at their disposal! When they go to disperse this food they claim that the people start getting rowdy or whatever and so then take off without handing out the supplies. What a load of crap! As long as these aid workers are not in danger-and they're not because they stay on the vehicles-just throw the supplies out already! It's a chance they have to take! They claim to be afraid the people will injure each other or whatever but what is the alternative? The people will just sit there and die or turn on each other anyway-there's nothing to lose!

They can drop these people food! They can if they want to-there's no excuse why they can't! If they can drop bombs on innocent people in war, they can drop these people some food! Why are people so blind to what is going on over there! They have DONATED food and supplies sitting there and making people sign for it-tying everything up in red tape! There is no time for that foolishness-time is of the essence. Stop taking inventory and get that stuff out there! The media is already starting to lose focus on this and so many of us have short attention spans-we're missing what is going on over there. We need to put pressure on our governments, the media, these aid groups, etc. to let them know that we are watching and what they ae doing-or not doing-is totally unacceptable! Haiti needs help NOW!!!

To Communitarian, I did not say "that the bigger countries want to stop the poorer countries being reliant and hence them being "slow" to respond". read my comment again ! The "Big" countries want the Haitians to be self reliant, not to stop the poorer countries being reliant.
As to suggest there is no such policy in the world. I would suggest that you stop being so naive.

MikeP is always whining on about " trolls ". It seems to be incomprehensible to him that other people can hold opinions different to his own. Perhaps he suffers from super-sensitivity?