Haiti faces a crisis of unspeakable magnitude after last Tuesday's devastating earthquake.

Estimates have put the death toll at between 50,000 and 100,000 people. Some say it could even be higher. Alas, the real number of those who died in the earthquake itself or in its aftermath will probably never be known.

While workers are burying some of the dead in mass graves, countless bodies remain unclaimed in the streets and the limbs of the dead stick out from crushed buildings. Other bodies are being loaded on trucks and driven to the outskirts of residential areas to be burned. Residents put toothpaste around their nostrils and beg passers-by for surgical masks to cut the smell.

One of the poorest nations on earth, Haiti's people have experienced a seemingly endless cycle of poverty, political upheavals, crime and natural disasters since it became the world's first black-led republic and the first independent Caribbean state in the early 19th century. The whole world is rightly very shaken by the tremendous fresh suffering of the people of Haiti.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the World Food Programme was providing high-energy biscuits and ready-to-eat meals to about 8,000 people "several times a day", a mere drop in the huge ocean of human suffering Haitians are enduring. In fact, the agency wants to scale up its efforts to feed about one million people within 15 days and two million people within a month.

Food, water and other aid is flowing into Haiti in earnest, as relief groups and officials are focused on moving the supplies out of the clogged airport and to the hungry, exhausted earthquake survivors. Still, there is concern about the possibility of violence, triggered by frustration if the pace of aid distribution does not pick up.

The UN is struggling to coordinate relief efforts in Haiti as aid groups also started bringing supplies overland from the Dominican Republic. The international organisation said it was in charge of distributing aid and ensuring security. The US deployed several thousand soldiers to give their help as Haiti handed to it control of its only international airport.

Alas, that is not enough for the survivors, who not only lost relatives, are injured and also had their homes destroyed, will surely need a great deal of international support to be able to survive and rebuild their lives.

Another heartbreaking reality of the enormous tragedy is that many of those who would have offered their support to the shattered lives of the people of the island are themselves victims, an uncounted number of them also being listed among the fatalities. The Holy Father appealed for generosity in giving to "these brothers and sisters who are living a moment of necessity and pain, our concrete solidarity and the proactive support of the international community". Pope Benedict XVI assured Haitians of his "spiritual closeness" and that there would be no delay in the mobilisation of aid from the Church's charitable institutions "to fulfil the most immediate needs of the population".

There is no doubt that the Maltese people, in a spirit of full solidarity, will leave no stone unturned to contribute as best they could towards alleviating the sufferings of the hundreds of thousands of Haiti's nine million people who are in need of aid because of the catastrophe.

Generous and genuine love and solidarity are possibly the only real comfort, the only big answer to the sea of pain that exists in Haiti.