Category: Haiti

140 of our neighbors in Haiti have now certifiedly died of cholera, and hundreds of thousands of Haitians also badly affected by last December’s earthquakes are also threatened by it.
And it is not the case that cholera has been “endemic” in Haiti at all, any time in recallable history. This is the first cholera epidemic in the country for a century, the specialists are saying. This is the revisitation of a scourge of the distant past.
I ache for Haiti’s people, and for what the return of this scourge tells us about the broader backward-marching trajectory their country has been taking throughout all the recent decades– decades in which the U.S. has been economically and politically dominant throughout the whole of this region (except in Cuba.)
Haiti is a tragic society in its own right. But for us U.S. citizens it is also a mirror in which we can look, and that tells us a lot about ourselves and our country’s often woefully misguided priorities.
The map accessible through this page on Reliefnet indicates that St. Marc, the epicenter of the epidemic, is some way away from the vast tent encampments that have proliferated around the capital, Port-au-Prince, since the earthquake. But who knows where it will travel to next? The physical and political infrastructure of the whole country has still done little to recover from the quake.
I don’t like to point fingers at a time like this. But Bill Clinton is supposed to be a special U.N envoy for Haitian reconstruction. Maybe he should have been spending more time doing that more effectively and less time running around the U.S. making snarky political comments about Pres. Obama?
Main point, though. Everyone needs to work hard to save lives in Haiti, now. By and large this does not mean shipping a few photogenic Haitian babies out of the country to be adopted by U.S. families. It means rebuilding Haitian families and their livelihoods and social-political infrastructure.

Agence France Presse is reporting today that, six days after storm system Jeanne slammed into Haiti Sept. 18,

The death toll in northern Haiti’s flooding rose to 1,160, with 1,250 missing, Civil Protection Office spokesman Dieufort Delorge announced Friday.

The BBC is reporting that the dying and desperation are still far from over in Haiti:

People who may not have had food for days have been gathering around relief centres, hampering the handing out of supplies.
At one warehouse in Haiti’s third largest city, there were angry scenes as several hundred people surged against the gates of the building, desperate to get inside…
Survivors have to drink and cook with water from ditches containing rotting bodies and sewage.
“It’s a critical situation in terms of epidemics, because of the bodies still in the streets, because people are drinking dirty water and scores are getting injuries from debris – huge cuts that are getting infected,” Francoise Gruloos, Haiti director for the UN Children’s Fund was quoted as saying.

For those of us who live in North America– these are our neighbors!
Where is President Bush on this???
Why is the US military not flying shuttle flights of relief supplies and equipment into Haiti around the clock?
Why is the US Navy not offloading field hospitals, food, emergency housing materials, and water-purification equipment at every affected area, even as I write this?
Why are US citizens not demanding action by our government?
These are our neighbors.
I note that State Dept. today announced that the administration has released “approximately $2 million in funding for emergency humanitarian activities” to assist Jeanne’s victims in Haiti. That might be a start. But allocating the funding is far from the same as getting the aid in question actually delivered.
In this context, the actual politics of Haiti is fairly irrelevant. (Except inasmuch as we can say that a responsible, accountable government there would have had far better measures in place to deal with the tropical weather-systems that are totally foreseeable, every year, throughout the Caribbean… As we saw in nearby Cuba, which last week evacuated two million of its people from low-lying areas… )
For now, the people of Haiti need help, pure and simple.
I do note however that just seven months ago the Bush administration helped bring about the removal of the country’s democratically elected President and then installed its own puppet President there…
And even after that maneuver, this administration feels under no obligation to help the people of Haiti?
Shame! Shame!!!
p.s. I have found that this is the best site to get up-to-date info on the humanitarian situation in Haiti.

I’ve been filled with sadness reading about the effects of hurricane damage in Haiti. Some 700 people are now known to have died there in the floods and mudslides brought on by the most recent hurricanes, and a further 1,000 are missing and–I imagine–very likely also dead.
The BBC website has this info about the deadly effects of the flooding there. The flooding and mudslides were exacerbated by widespread deforestation in the country; and the casualties were magnified by the failure of the authorities to set in motion any effective evacuation of people from at-risk areas…
Those Haitians who have survived so far still face terrible circumstances. According to that piece on the BBC site:

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) estimates 175,000 people are without food, water and electricity and in need of help.
“The floodwaters were so strong in Gonaives that they have washed away the whole town,” WFP Country Director Guy Gauvreau told BBC News Online.
…Severed road links and a tense security situation are hampering efforts.
The WFP said aid trucks carrying emergency food supplies had been lined up to form a makeshift bridge over the water.

But then, by contrast, there’s Cuba…

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