Tag: epidemics

Haiti is in need of millions of dollars to combat the cholera epidemic, but the US is still holding back $1.15 billion in Aid that has already been appropriated.  It’s time to tell your congress members to stop sitting on the wallet and get that money to Haiti, where it’s urgently needed.

AFP today reports on the need for $164 million in aid to combat the cholera epidemic in Haiti:

nough.  I’ve been writing for the past week, daily, because I’m concerned that the cholera outbreak in Haiti endangers the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and especially threatens the more than a million Haitians who are living in tents or under tarps in Port au Prince and elsewhere in the country.

This morning’s Miami Herald Editorial captures exactly what needs to be said in the US about this impending public health disaster:

he news from Haiti continues to be simply awful.  The cholera epidemic that started elsewhere has now reached the Haitian capital, Port Au Prince, where it threatens the 1.5 million people who were displaced by the recent earthquake.  “Displaced” is a sanitary way of describing the squalor of terrible living conditions which only foster the spread of the disease.

The epidemic threatens the lives of people who suffered so much in the earthquake and who then survived the rain and flooding caused by Hurricane Tomas.  Even before these natural disasters, Haiti was wracked by hunger, poor infrastructure, high infant mortality, short life span, poverty and disease.  Now weakened people face the onslaught of a cholera epidemic.

Please make the jump.

As feared, Cholera appears to have arrived in Port Au Prince, Haiti.  A first confirmed case has now been reported: the 3 year-old child with the disease had not left Port Au Prince.  This outbreak is a major threat to millions of people.  The report:

Haiti, ravaged for centuries and suffering long before its enormous, destructive earthquake, now braces for a huge cholera epidemic.  The cholera epidemic on Saturday had already killed more than 200 and there are more than 2600 reported cases.  Today the news is still bad.  The NY Times reports:

Diarrhea, while a common ailment here, is a symptom of cholera. And anxiety has been growing fiercely that the cholera epidemic, which began last week in the northwest of Haiti, will soon strike the earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.