Haitians Riot As Cholera Deaths Top 1,000

[Madeline]

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Anti-U.N. riots rocked several Haitian cities and towns on Monday, led by demonstrators who blame a contingent of Nepalese peacekeepers for a deadly outbreak of cholera. Protesters barricaded roads, burned cars and exchanged gunfire with U.N. soldiers, leaving cities impassable into the night.

A demonstrator was shot and killed by a United Nations peacekeeper during an exchange of gunfire in Quartier Morin, near Haiti's second-largest city of Cap-Haitien, the U.N. mission said. The mission said it was investigating the incident but asserted that the soldier was acting in self-defense.

The 12,000-member force also reported that at least six U.N. personnel were wounded in protests at Hinche in the central plateau. Radio Kiskeya reported them to be Nepalese soldiers. Radio Metropole said at least 12 Haitians were injured in Cap-Haitien.

The cholera backlash plays upon some Haitians' longstanding resentment of the 12,000-member military mission, which has been the dominant security force in Haiti since 2004. It is rooted both in fear of a disease previously unknown to Haiti and internationally shared suspicion that the U.N. base could have been a source of the infection that has now left nearly 1,000 dead.

Cholera had never before been documented in Haiti before it broke out about three weeks ago. Suspicions quickly surround a Nepalese base located on the Artibonite River system, where the outbreak started. The soldiers arrived there in October following outbreaks in their home country and about a week before Haiti's epidemic was discovered.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the strain now ravaging the country matched a strain specific to South Asia, but said they had not pinpointed its origin or how it arrived in Haiti.

Following an Associated Press investigation, the U.N. acknowledged that there were sanitation problems at the base, but says its soldiers were not responsible for the outbreak. No formal or independent investigation has taken place despite calls from Haitian human-rights groups and U.S. health care experts.

The country's health ministry made the announcement on Tuesday, setting the official death toll at 1,034. The figures are dated Sunday and presented after two days of review.
Aid workers say official figures may understate the epidemic. While the ministry of health says more than 16,700 people have been hospitalized nationwide, Doctors Without Borders reports that its clinics alone have treated more than 12,000.

Transmitted by feces, the disease can be all but prevented if people have access to safe drinking water and regularly wash their hands.

President Rene Preval addressed the nation on Sunday to dispel myths and educate people on good sanitation and hygiene.

But sanitary conditions don't exist in much of Haiti, and more than 14,600 people have hospitalized as the disease has spread across the countryside and to nearly all the country's major population centers, including the capital, Port-au-Prince. Doctors Without Borders and other medical aid groups have expressed concern that the outbreak could eventually sicken hundreds of thousands of people.

In the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, health officials banned used clothing from being sold in outdoor markets along the shared border as a precautionary measure to stop the disease's spread.

Violent protests over cholera break out in Haiti, U.N. peacekeepers wounded | cleveland.com

Should we insist the US send aid?

Your thoughts?

All content on Cholera | Doctors Without Borders

 

[uscitizen]

Those darned liberals carrying disease to the Hatians!

 

[Ravi]

Where is teepeesamoroid to laugh at their plight?

So sad...if only they would or could boil their water before drinking it.

 

[Madeline]

I dun mean to seem uncaring, but cholera has been a terrible plague in Africa for some time now....it scares me that this has reached our part of the world. I want to assume that it cannot gain a foothold in the US, but I'm not so sure.

Meanwhile, should we sending aid, IYO?

 

[Ravi]

No, it can't. Thanks to our social programs we actually have clean drinking water right out of the tap.

 

[Madeline]

No, it can't. Thanks to our social programs we actually have clean drinking water right out of the tap.

Not everywhere in the US, Ravi...though I agree, in most places. And the first I'd be alarmed about is Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

 

[mdn2000]

Our immigration policy is too strong, impossible for the cholera to reach here.

Where is Obama, we should of stepped in, its barbaric that people should die of this simply treated disease.

Obama is unable to react to disasters no matter where or what kind.

 

[Ravi]

No, it can't. Thanks to our social programs we actually have clean drinking water right out of the tap.

Not everywhere in the US, Ravi...though I agree, in most places. And the first I'd be alarmed about is Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

PR and the Islands also have potable water and decent plumbing.

Don't be so paranoid.

 

[California Girl]

We do send aid. Just pointing out the facts.

 

[mdn2000]

Haiti, a failed nation, not all islands on earth are big enough to be a nation, in this case Haiti is half an Island, the other half the Dominican Republic. A thousand people dead and the treatment is water and salts, Gatorade can save their lives yet they are dead.

What happened, why, seems like someone needs their butt kicked. Make the island one state, under god, under the USA. Save the people, Haiti is a failed nation. When will people learn not all people have the education nor experience to survive as a tiny nation.

Gatorade is part of the treatment, a part that will allow them to live.

WHO | Frequently asked questions and information for travellers

What treatments are available?

The most important treatment is rehydration, which consists of prompt replacement of the water and salts lost through severe diarrhoea and vomiting. Early rehydration can save the lives of nearly all cholera patients. Most can be rehydrated quickly and easily by drinking large quantities of a solution of oral rehydration salts. Patients who become severely dehydrated may need to receive fluid intravenously.

Packets of oral rehydration salts are available from most city pharmacies and health care facilities. WHO recommends that travellers include oral rehydration salts in their medical kits.

If you have diarrhoea - especially severe diarrhoea - and are in an area where there is cholera, seek treatment immediately from a physician or other trained health care provider. Begin drinking water and other non-sweetened fluids, such as soup, on the way to getting medical treatmen

 

[The Infidel]

I dun mean to seem uncaring, but cholera has been a terrible plague in Africa for some time now....it scares me that this has reached our part of the world. I want to assume that it cannot gain a foothold in the US, but I'm not so sure.

Meanwhile, should we sending aid, IYO?

Ummmm




NO!



Im sick of America always being asked to do the heavy lifting and then pissed on after we do so....

Let the rest of the world stop hating on us, and maybe.... just maybe, I might reconsider that stance. Until then.... FUCK EM!