Welcome to this week’s Health and Fitness. This is an Open Thread.
I am back in NYC, sleeping in my own bed and trying to get back to “normal” which will take a few days, especially the cold. It was cool in New Orleans but not like NYC and, ugh, snow. I stopped in at my local Duncan Donuts yesterday and was warmly welcomed home. My daughter had told the staff where I was, so there were lots of hugs and free donuts for Dr. TMC who is addicted to the chocolate ones.
I’ll be making the Greek Zucchini Fritters tonight with Blackened Cat Fish and a Sauvgnon Blanc. Thank you all again for your support of the Haitian people. Please do not forget them, this is far from over.
Dr. Marie-Pierre Allié, president of Médecins Sans Frontières-France, who recently returned from a field visit to Haiti, analyses the situation there one month after the disaster. At present, areas of concern include the vacuum caused by the withdrawal of some of the international medical teams who rushed to scene after the earthquake, the ongoing lack of shelter, and the slow pace of aid distribution.
One month after the earthquake, what is the situation in Haiti?
(emphasis mine)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – As hundreds of thousands of people displaced by last month’s earthquake put down stakes in the squalid tent camps of this wrecked city, the authorities are struggling to address the worsening problem of human waste. Public health officials warn that waste accumulation is creating conditions for major disease outbreaks, including cholera, which could further stress the ravaged health system.
Some American and Haitian public health specialists here consider the diseases stemming from the buildup of human waste in the camps as possibly the most pressing health threat in the city. Doctors are already seeing a spike in illnesses like typhoid and shigellosis, which arise from contaminated food or water.
“We’re witnessing the setup for the spread of severe diarrheal illnesses in a place where the health system has collapsed and without a functioning sewage system to begin with,” said Ian Greenwald, chief medical officer for a Duke University team of doctors working here this month. Some American and Haitian public health specialists here consider the diseases stemming from the buildup of human waste in the camps as possibly the most pressing health threat in the city. Doctors are already seeing a spike in illnesses like typhoid and shigellosis, which arise from contaminated food or water.
“We’re witnessing the setup for the spread of severe diarrheal illnesses in a place where the health system has collapsed and without a functioning sewage system to begin with,” said Ian Greenwald, chief medical officer for a Duke
University team of doctors working here this month.The problem has become impossible to overlook in many districts of Port-au-Prince, with the stench of decomposing bodies replaced by that of excrement. Children in some camps that are still lacking latrines and portable toilets play in open areas scattered with the waste. The light rains here this week caused some donated latrines in the camps to overflow, illustrating how the problem would grow more acute as the rainy season intensified in the months ahead.
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Haiti urgently needs tarpaulins, tents and 25,000 toilets one month after a magnitude 7 earthquake killed more than 200,000 people, the United Nation’s top aid official said on Friday.
U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes said the emergency medical care phase of dealing with earthquake trauma patients is “mostly over.” He added that one month after the disaster the two top priorities for impoverished Haiti are shelter and sanitation.
“It is urgent to get everybody with some kind of reasonably waterproof covering over their heads,” Holmes told reporters after a tour of earthquake recovery sites in Port-au-Prince and surrounding towns.
