A Surbiton couple who spent three months in Haiti, dealing with the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake, have returned home and vowed to devote their lives to helping the country.

Carwyn and Reninca Hill went to Cap Haitien, 90 miles north of capital Port-au-Prince, for 12 months in December 2008, to build a hospital and children’s home for Surbiton-registered charity Haiti Hospital Appeal.

The extended their stay after the January 12 disaster and, after initially using the charity’s ambulance to ferry aid to capital and transfer victims to the less affected north, the charity set up the country’s first spinal injury treatment unit.

Mr Hill said: “We have six men – the rest are women because in Haitian culture the women are at home looking after the children and they were at home when the earthquake hit. One of the mothers was saying to me that now she is not able to walk again, what a bad mother she is.

“Before the earthquake, disabled people were discriminated against and left at home. We need to tell them that just because they are disabled they can still be a maths teacher or a mother.”

Haiti was already the poorest country in the northern hemisphere, and Mr Hill said he had witnessed increasing civil unrest in recent weeks.

He said: “These people are seeing aid come in for the earthquake but they have been living in poverty for years. There has been looting in the north with rice trucks. They have not been violent but people are taking the food. That is new.

“When you work within slums where you have women trying to give you their baby because they would die at home – that can put a completely different twist on the injustice of it all.”

Thirty British volunteers, including 20 medics, flew to the Haiti to help the hospital after its appeal, and treasurer Phil Johnson said the charity had received £400,000 since the earthquake - more than treble last year’s turnover.

The charity is concentrating on three foundations necessary for future work: clean water, clean energy to run hospital equipment, and clean accounts to show how donations are spent.

Mr Hill said: “It’s always difficult emotionally when you come back from families who live on 15 gourdes (25p) a day and feed six children. To go from that to standing in the supermarket is always hard. I have not really got my head around it yet.

“I was on the train back from London and saw a block of flats being demolished and it just brought back memories of the earthquake. It’s so intense.”

Contact the charity at 30 Gates Green Road, West Wickham, Kent BR4 9JW, or visit haitihospitalappeal.org.

Read more about their harrowing journey at surreycomet.co.uk/news