The cholera epidemic that broke out last week in central Haiti, so far killing 259 people, has now reached Port-au-Prince, raising fears that the disease will take root in the capital city’s squalid refugee camps that sprang up after the January earthquake that left as many as 300,000 dead.
As of Tuesday morning, five cases had been found in Port-au-Prince, all among Haitians who had traveled to the city from the Artibonite area 50 miles to the north where the disease emerged and several thousand cases have been reported.
The five have been isolated and treated, but it is all but certain other cases will emerge. Medical aid workers are reporting some success in slowing the disease’s spread—only six new deaths were reported Monday—but they warn it can only be contained if it is prevented from contaminating the water supply in Port-au-Prince and its surrounding refugee encampments, where an estimated 1 million people reside...
After a degree of stability was achieved and the corrupt and incompetent regime of President René Préval propped up, the White House turned its attention to further opening the island to sweatshop exploitation in the garment industry. This is the specific task of former president Bill Clinton, who heads the US response to the disaster. Clinton is seeking to lift trade barriers to the products of Haitian garment factories, where workers earn less than $3 a day.
The US pledged $1.5 billion in relief money, but as of July, six months after the earthquake, no money had arrived to the international relief commission... Overall, only a small percentage of the aid and pledges of private charities and other national governments have been released for use in Haiti.
The result is that Port-au-Prince and nearby cities remain in a state of ruin, and ripe for the spread of disease. As of July, 98 percent of the rubble from the earthquake had yet to be cleared. Almost no new housing has been built. The teeming encampments have little or no access to electricity, running water and sewerage.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/hait-o26.shtml
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