Haiti’s Unending Trial
Posted on November 19, 2010
The cholera outbreak in Haiti has killed more than 1000 people. Tragically, this is coming to a population of people that is already devastated and to a health care system that is already so overburdened.
Sadly, the disease is also the focus of political debate because the people of Haiti believe it is the result of UN peacekeepers who are working in Haiti who may have brought the disease with them. According to the New York Times, local protests left two people dead as demonstrators directed their ire at the peacekeepers, a 12,000-strong, multinational force that arrived in Haiti in
2004 in response to political conflict. The UN believes the protests are an effort to push the troops out of the country prior to the upcoming presidential election on November 28 in order to encourage chaos and destabilize the country.
Sadly, the protesters have made it harder to treat the victims in Cap Haitien, where supplies are running low and the death rate is high.
While South Asia is home to many strains of Cholera, officials found that the bacteria, which lives in feces, had contaminated a river where Nepalese troops who arrived in Haiti in October shortly before the outbreak began. Prior to this outbreak, Haiti has not suffered from Cholera epidemics in this century.
For the medical staff attempting to treat and contain this disease, the issue of where this Cholera strain came from is not the focus. They are struggling to save lives, contain the infection and prevent spread.
From the New York Times, Studying the genetics of the strain “would give a better idea where it came from,” said Dr. David Sack, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies cholera outbreaks, “But I agree it is more important to prevent the disease and control it. It should not be killing people.”
As of this week, the death toll has reached 1,034, with 16,799 people treated for cholera or symptoms of the disease.
