By Jean Herve Charles
I was travelling at the beginning of the month of October, from Port au Prince to Cape Haitian by public transportation when one of the travelers exchanged a phone call giving the information in the bus that eleven persons had died from food poisoning from a restaurant in Mirebalais, a bustling town not too far from the Dominican border. I would learn later it was not a case of food poisoning but the beginning of a cholera epidemic with the epicenter located near the Nepalese UN contingent stationed in that city.
Mirebalais is close to the Artibonite River, the largest and the longest Haitian river. Investigative research initiated by the French Health Ministry and conducted by a French specialist, Professor Renaux Piarroux, along with the Dean of the School of Public Health at Harvard University, has concluded that massive dumping of human waste from the UN base had compromised the quality of the water for regular use.
Notable institutions, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, have hidden the origin of the disease with the lingo that ‘the source of the virus could not be determined with certainty”. The Swedish Ambassador Claes Hammar broke ranks with the wall of silence against Haiti that its own government has contributed to erect.
I have the information from reliable sources from the United States that the strain of cholera in Haiti is from the Nepal UN contingent in Haiti. It is up to the United Nations to reveal the whole truth about the genesis of the cholera.
The cholera germ could not find a hotter bed than Haiti to germinate with celerity and intensity. Public health as an institution and in practice does not exist in the entire country.
To facilitate the vein of corruption, the government has emasculated the power and the means of each local entity to clean its streets and the management of its waste, by creating an institution, the CNE, which is outside the purview of the legislative branch and of public scrutiny.
The CNE with massive equipment bought with the Caribe fund is using this material and its human resource with the prism of political priority not with the goal of providing the citizens of Haiti with a clean environment.
To add insult to injury the man in charge of that institution, Jude Celestin, is the dauphin groomed by the president of Haiti to become the next head of state of the Republic.
According to John Snow (1813- 1858), the father of the etymology of the disease, the cholera epidemic is, above all, a disease of contaminated water. You will find no city in Haiti, including the capital, equipped with a system for distributing potable drinking water. (The town of Petit Goave has just received a grant from Red Cross France to provide the city with drinking water.)
Close associates of the government are in the business of selling drinking water; as such the government should stay out of that business. DINEPA the new institution funded by the Spanish government to manage the water system in the country, does not have a policy of universal distribution of potable clean water.
The cholera disease has already caused the death of some 3,481 people with 80,000 in hospitalization. It is expected, according to the Pan American Health Organization to reach an effective 1 million people. The Cuban doctors, as well as Doctors Without Borders, have been in the frontline of the epidemic containment.
The term cholera, derived from the Greek word khole, is caused by a bacillus named vibrio cholera. It has its origin in the Indian continent near the squalor of the Ganges Delta. It spread from there through the silk trade to Russia in 1817, killing one million people. It went next to Germany, 1831, London and Paris in 1849 and returned to Russia in 1852. It is a dangerous infection that starts with a profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting of “a rice water with a fishy odor”. It can kill a person within hours, with circulatory collapse leading to a renal failure and certain death.
While the cholera disease is extremely dangerous, it can be treated easily with vaccine (85% effective), oral serum and, in the larger context, universal water purification, clean sewage and proper waste management system.
Haiti is postponing this radical operation to engage in the propaganda of cleaning hands and bottled water, while refuse and uncollected garbage is all over.
The earthquake of January 12, 2010, was an occasion for Haiti to rebuild itself. The cholera epidemic is another opportunity for Haiti to correct its deficient public health system. I have seen no clear signals that the Haitian government, along with the international community, is seizing the opportunity to create a new nation where cholera or any other disease or epidemic will have no quarter.
The Dominican Republic has registered already 139 cases of cholera. The epidemic respects no borders. A functioning and responsible leadership in Haiti is the best handicap against this modern scourge that enjoys squalor to spread its wings!
January 8, 2011
caribbeannewsnow
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Showing posts with label Mirebalais. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mirebalais. Show all posts
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Thursday, December 9, 2010
United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the cholera epidemic
Reflections of Fidel
MINUSTAH and the epidemic
Taken from CubaDebate
MINUSTAH and the epidemic
Taken from CubaDebate
APPROXIMATELY three weeks ago news and footage came in of Haitian citizens throwing stones and angrily protesting against the forces of the MINUSTAH, accusing it of having transmitted cholera to that country via a Nepalese soldier.
The initial impression, if one did not receive any additional information, is that it was a rumor born from the antipathy that every occupying force provokes.
How could that information be confirmed? Many of us were unaware of the characteristics of cholera and its means of transmission. A few days later, the protests in Haiti ceased and there was no more talk of the matter.
The epidemic followed its inexorable course, and other problems, such as the risks associated with the electoral battle, occupied our time.
Today, reliable and credible news came in concerning what really happened. The Haitian people had more than sufficient reason to express their indignation.
The AFP news agency textually affirmed that: "Last month, the eminent French epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux headed an investigation in Haiti and came to the conclusion that the epidemic was generated by an imported strain, and extended from the Nepalese base" of MINUSTAH.
For its part, another European agency, EFE, reported: "The origin of the disease is to be found in the little town of Mirebalais, in the center of the country, where Nepalese soldiers had based their camp, and it appeared a few days after their arrival, which confirms the origin of the epidemic…"
"To date, the UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has denied that the epidemic entered via its blue berets."
"…French Dr. Renaud Piarroux, considered one of the principal world specialists in the study of cholera epidemics, leaves no doubt as to the origin of the disease…"
"The French study was ordered by Paris at the request of the Haitian authorities, stated a French diplomatic spokesperson."
"…the appearance of the disease coincides with the arrival of the Nepalese soldiers who, moreover, originate from a country where there is a cholera epidemic.
"There is no other way of explaining such a sudden and fierce eclosion of cholera in a little town of a few dozen inhabitants.
"The report also analyses the form of the propagation of the disease, given that fecal water from the Nepalese camp was draining into the river from which the town’s inhabitants take their water."
As the same agency communicated, the most surprising thing that the UN did was "…to send an investigative mission to the Nepalese camp, which concluded that that could not have been the origin of the epidemic."
In the midst of the destruction wrought by the earthquake, the epidemic and its poverty, Haiti cannot do without an international force which can cooperate with a nation ruined by foreign interventions and transnational exploitation. The UN must not only fulfill its elemental duty of fighting for Haiti’s reconstruction and development, but also that of mobilizing the resources needed to eradicate an epidemic that is threatening to extend to the neighboring Dominican Republic, the Caribbean, Latin America and other similar Asian and African countries.
Why did the UN insist on denying that the MINUSTAH brought the epidemic to the people of Haiti? We are not blaming Nepal, which in the past was a British colony, and whose men were utilized in its colonial wars and are now seeking employment as soldiers.
We made inquiries with the Cuban doctors currently providing services in Haiti and they confirmed to us the news circulated by the abovementioned European news agencies with notable precision.
I will make a brief synthesis of what was communicated to us by Yamila Zayas Nápoles, a specialist in comprehensive general medicine and anesthesiology, director of a medical institution that has eight basic specialties and diagnostic tools from the Cuba-Venezuela project, inaugurated in October 2009 in the urban area of Mirebalais, with 86,000 inhabitants, in the department of Nord.
On Saturday, October 15 three patients were admitted with symptoms of diarrhea and acute dehydration; on Sunday 16th, four were admitted with similar characteristics, but all of them from one family, and they made the decision to isolate them and communicate what had happened to the Medical Mission; surprisingly, on Monday 17th, 28 patients were admitted with similar symptoms.
The Medical Mission immediately sent a group of specialists in epidemiology who took blood, vomit, fecal samples and data, which were sent with urgency to Haiti’s national laboratories.
On October 22, the labs reported that the strain isolated matched to the one prevalent in Asia and Oceania, which is the most severe. The Nepalese unit of the UN blue berets is located on the bank of the Artibonite River, which runs through the little community of Méyè, where the epidemic emerged, and Mirebalais, to which it then rapidly spread.
In spite of the sudden way in which cholera appeared in the small, but excellent hospital in the service of Haiti, only 13 of the first 2,822 sick persons died, giving a mortality rate of 0.5%; subsequently, when the Cholera Treatment Center was set up in a remote area, out of 3,459 patients, five in a serious condition died, giving 0.1%.
The total number of persons suffering from cholera in Haiti rose today, Tuesday, December 7 to 93,222 persons, and the number of patients who have died reached a total of 2,120. Among those treated by the Cuban Mission the mortality rate rose to 0.83%. The mortality rate in other hospital institutions stands at 3.2%. With the experience acquired, appropriate measures and the reinforcement of the Henry Reeve Brigade, the Cuban Medical Mission, with the support of the Haitian authorities, has offered a presence in many of the isolated 207 sub-communes, so that no Haitian citizen lacks medical attention in the face of the epidemic, and many thousands of lives can be saved.
Fidel Castro Ruz
December 7, 2010
6:34 p.m.
granma.cu
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