[Debate] Cholera Infections Rising Again in Haiti as Rainy Season Begins

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

<http://bit.ly/Hli6Q2>
Cholera Infections Rising Again in Haiti as Rainy Season Begins,
Highlighting Urgency for NGO's, Agencies to Redouble Their Efforts,
CEPR Co-Director Says

"Groups Must Do Their Best to Avoid a Repetition of Last Year’s Tragic
Increase in Preventable Deaths"

For Immediate Release: April 3, 2012
Contact: Dan Beeton, 202-239-1460

Washington, D.C.- Cholera infections are rising again with rainy
weather in Haiti in a predictable seasonal shift, and the
international community must act quickly to contain the epidemic,
Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark
Weisbrot said today. Weisbrot cited a new investigative article on the
cholera outbreak in the New York Times by Deborah Sontag that
describes how cholera resurged during the 2011 rainy season after
NGO’s pulled back their treatment and prevention efforts during the
dry season months.

“We saw what happened last year,” Weisbrot said. “The international
community and some NGO’s cut back on cholera treatment and prevention
just before the rainy season, and there was a spike in infections and
deaths. They have the resources to contain and then eliminate Haiti’s
cholera epidemic. What is needed is the will to make it happen.”

The latest figures from the Haitian Ministry of Health show 16 cholera
deaths in just 8 days, from March 8 – 16, the most recent data
available. This is an increase from the previous two months, in which
there were 13 for the entire month of February and eight in January.

Weisbrot pointed to a planned vaccination program – currently stalled
-- as well as treatment and prevention efforts as program areas that
need to be fully funded and implemented as soon as possible.

“Part of cholera prevention is ensuring access to clean water and
sanitation,” Weisbrot said. “But as everyone knows, Haiti’s internally
displaced persons – among many others – are a long way from having
access to these necessities. In many camps there is no money going to
empty latrines, going on months now. Sanitation does not exist in such
situations – but disease thrives.”

The increase in cholera infections and deaths during the 2011 rainy
season was predictable, and predicted, Weisbrot noted. A CEPR report
released last year stated that “despite myriad warnings, many
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) withdrew from cholera treatment
efforts right before this summer’s rainy season and the predictable
increase in the number of cholera cases that followed.”

The paper also pointed out that “To date, treatment is still unequally
focused on urban centers despite the much higher fatality rates in
Haiti’s more rural areas” – an exacerbating factor also described in
Sontag’s article.

Weisbrot added that in the longer term, the international community
should help eradicate cholera on the entire island of Hispaniola by
assisting Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic with the
acquisition of an adequate water and sanitation infrastructure.
Agencies including the Pan American Health Organization, the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF have stated that
“controlling cholera in Hispaniola over the long term will be only
possible through investments in water, sanitation and hygiene
infrastructure…”

“Given the U.N.’s inadvertent role in introducing cholera to Haiti in
October 2010, the international community has a responsibility to
ensure that funding is made available for this infrastructure to be
completed over the next few years,” Weisbrot said.

The New York Times article on Sunday cited UN Deputy Special Envoy to
Haiti Paul Farmer:  “In the future, historians will look back and say,
‘Wow, that’s unfortunate… This unfolded right under the noses of all
those NGOs. And they will ask, ‘Why didn’t they try harder? Why didn’t
they throw the kitchen sink at cholera in Haiti?’ ”

Sontag described the tragic resurgence in deaths in her article as
well: “[S]ome think cholera could have been stymied, even eradicated,
last winter during the dry season after the first wave. Instead, it
flared with the rains even as aid groups shuttered or reduced
operations. And now, after another winter without an aggressive
prevention and eradication effort, the health authorities fear a
reprise.”



-- 
Yoshie Furuhashi
<http://mrzine.org/>