Photo: United Nations
By Peter Costantini
Ansel Herz has filed three stories so far for Inter Press Service on the cholera epidemic in Haiti.
His reporting has given voice to the perspectives of some of the estimated 1.3 million internally displaced people stuck in over 1,350 tent camps, who are now threatened by the disease. He has visited hospitals that are treating cholera patients, and draws on several frontline medical-care providers as sources.
These stories look through the eyes of people confronting a horrifying yet preventable public-health breakdown. They also put the epidemic in the wide-angle context of underlying systemic crises dating back long before the January 12 earthquake.
For example, Herz reports that the percentage of Haitians without access to safe drinking water actually increased 7 percent from 1990 to 2005, according to Partners in Health. This international medical organization, which has a long history in Haiti, observed in a 2008 report: "Combined with unsanitary conditions, the lack of water is a major factor in exacerbating Haiti's health crises."
As PiH Chief Medical Officer Joia Mukherjee put it, cholera is "a disease of poverty" . During the previous government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, she pointed out, Inter-American Development Bank loans for a public water supply in the Artibonite Valley, where the cholera originated, were blocked by international donors on political grounds.
In rural areas, where most of the country's population lives, fewer than 8 percent have access to safe drinking water, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
The dearth of potable water and sanitation facilities not only in the camps, but also in many permanent communities, are now major factors contributing to the spread of the deadly disease.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/crossover-dreams/cholera-in-haiti-a-diseas_b_776565.html
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