Haiti's humanitarian crisis

[Junior]

http://www.slate.com...t_a.single.html

 

The place was Haiti. The mistake: a killer combination of cholera and gross negligence. The peacekeeping mission, known by its French initials, MINUSTAH, had been in the country since 2004, when it was authorized to protect an interim government installed after a coup. Six years later—thanks to a healthy dose of mission creep—the peacekeepers were still there. While rotating troops into what was now post-quake Haiti, the U.N. neglected to adequately screen a contingent of soldiers coming from an active cholera outbreak in Nepal. Upon arrival, the soldiers were sent to a rural U.N. base, outside the quake zone and long known for leaking sewage into a major river system that millions of Haitians used to drink, bathe, wash, and farm. Within days of their arrival, people downstream began to die. The epidemic then exploded, sickening more than 647,000 people, and killing in its first year more than twice the number of people who died on 9/11.

 

What is very sad is that Cholera is so easy to treat and prevent. There is really no reason for this to have happened.