True hero's for Haiti and places that need help.

[RodISHI]

Just wanted to share this to show who the true hero's are that go into disaster areas to help the people in need. This particular family I know and you can see their living conditions in Haiti while they are there. They work there helping families in Haiti that need a helping hand. These ministry families are in locations in South America also helping where ever they can to provide help with clean water, sanitary living conditions and building houses or repair houses for those in need in these poor countries. It should give everyone an idea how screwed up our charitable systems have become while the rich strip from the poor it is poorer and lower mid range income families that actually support these families in countries like Haiti.

A post with pictures

Small churches and the people with family businesses are the people that help support these missionaries when they go to other countries to help the poor.

 

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UN calls for $119 million in aid for Haiti hurricane victims...

U.N. seeks $119 million for Haiti hurricane victims
October 10, 2016 - The United Nations appealed for $119 million on Monday to bring life-saving assistance to 750,000 people in southwestern Haiti, which is reeling from a direct hit by Hurricane Matthew.

The money will go to provide food, clean drinking water and shelter to the most vulnerable among 1.4 million people in need, after large areas of crops were destroyed and infrastructure was damaged last week, the U.N. said in the three-month appeal to donors. "Hurricane Matthew has resulted in the largest humanitarian crisis in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake, at a time when the country is already facing an increase in the number of cholera cases and severe food insecurity and malnutrition," it said.

Haiti started burying some of its dead in mass graves after Hurricane Matthew, a government official said on Sunday, as cholera spread in the devastated southwest and the death toll from the storm rose to 1,000 people. "This is not a population on its knees, but on the ground," Pierre-Andre Dunbar, Haiti's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, told a news briefing. "Crops were also destroyed, which means the country will face a severe famine as the southwestern peninsula is considered the breadbasket of Haiti," he said.

In the Grande'Anse region on Haiti's western peninsula, some villages and towns suffered 90 percent destruction with low-income housing particularly affected, said Rudolph Muller of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "Needs may grow in the days ahead as more areas are reached," he said.

U.N. seeks $119 million for Haiti hurricane victims

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U.S. Marines Go Ashore for Hurricane Relief in Devastated Haiti
Oct 10, 2016 | About 375 Marines and sailors from the amphibious transport dock ship USS Mesa Verde went ashore Monday delivering tons of aid and medical supplies to devastated Haiti, where cholera is spreading in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, U.S. Southern Command said Monday.

The Mesa Verde is part of Joint Task Force-Matthew, the relief operation that formed as Hurricane Matthew grew to a Category 4 storm in the Caribbean. As of Monday, the task force had delivered more than 98,000 pounds of relief supplies to hard-hit areas of Haiti, SouthCom said. Haitian authorities have put the death toll from Matthew at more than 300, but an analysis by Reuters said the toll will likely top 1,000. Matthew hit hardest on Haiti’s southern peninsula, which juts westward into the Caribbean, and the relief efforts thus far are concentrating on the towns of Les Cayes and Jeremie, said Jose Ruiz, a SouthCom spokesman. "Along the southern region, you get most of the devastation," he said.

Roads were still flooded and blocked by debris from Matthew, making airlift the only method of reaching some areas, Ruiz said. The amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima is en route from Norfolk, Virginia, to join the relief operation. "We expect the Iwo to arrive Oct. 11" to provide more airlift and medical support, Ruiz said. The Iwo Jima has MV-22 Ospreys and 500 members of the 24th Expeditionary Unit aboard. The Mesa Verde has three CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters, one landing craft and 300 members of the 24th MEU aboard.

A man salvages personal items from his home destroyed by Hurricane Matthew in Les Cayes, Haiti, on Oct. 6, 2016. Authorities and aid workers fear it is the country's biggest disaster in years.​

Before leaving Norfolk, the Iwo Jima took on nearly 225 pallets of supplies, including 800 cases of bottled water, to help in the aftermath of one of the largest storms to hit the area in years. "We are prepared and honored to have the opportunity to help out our friends and neighbors in the western hemisphere," said Capt. James Midkiff, commanding officer of the Iwo Jima. Joint Task Force-Matthew has about 12 helicopters operating out of the capital of Port-au-Prince. Nine of those helicopters, including Army CH-47 Chinooks and UH-60 Black Hawks, came from a task force set up by Adm. Kurt Tidd, the SouthCom commander, at the Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras to be on call for disaster relief in the Caribbean, Ruiz said. On Oct. 5, SouthCom established Joint Task Force-Matthew to oversee U.S. military relief efforts in Haiti. The task force was deployed in support of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance following a request for U.S. assistance from the Haitian government.

Over the last several years, SouthCom has provided disaster assistance to Haiti to help the Caribbean nation in emergencies, such as the massive earthquake in 2010. The relief work has included the construction of emergency operations centers, disaster relief warehouses, fire stations and community centers that double as shelters. The command has also donated search and rescue boats, as well as transport vehicles to Haitian emergency response and civil protection agencies. Relief workers were alarmed by a resurgence of cholera, which has killed an estimated 10,000 Haitians and sickened more than 800,000 since the 2010 earthquake. Officials with Doctors Without Borders said they counted at least 39 cases of cholera in Port-à-Piment, where people have been forced to drink untreated river water because the city's water system was destroyed, USA Today reported.

Marines Go Ashore for Hurricane Relief in Devastated Haiti | Military.com

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Dutch navy delivers aid to hurricane-battered Haiti
Tuesday 11th October, 2016 - The Dutch government is sending a navy ship to Haiti to deliver aid including food, water and temporary shelters in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew.

Haiti's ravaged ports and waterways will also be checked by the vessel to ensure other aid ships can safely dock. The Dutch defence ministry said the ship is on its way from the Caribbean island of Curacao to Haiti while another ship is being loaded with more supplies.

Cholera victim Cenelson Lundi, aged just 13 months, receives treatment at the state hospital in Jeremie, Haiti​

Matthew's brutal assault on the impoverished nation killed hundreds of people, destroyed tens of thousands of homes, left at least 350,000 people in need of assistance and raised concerns over a surge in cholera cases.
Overseas aid minister Lilianne Ploumen said: "By getting there quickly we can work to prevent a further deterioration in the situation."

Dutch navy delivers aid to hurricane-battered Haiti - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

 

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Southern Haiti wiped out...

Haiti ‘like a nuclear bomb went off’
Tue, Oct 11, 2016 - MATTHEW’S AFTERMATH: In Port-a-Piment, almost all the houses have been reduced to little more than rubble and twisted metal, while colorful clothes litter the chaos

Patients arrived every 10 or 15 minutes, brought on motorcycles by relatives with vomit-covered shoulders and hoisted up the stairs into southwest Haiti’s Port-a-Piment hospital, where they could rest their weak, cholera-sapped limbs. Less than a week since Hurricane Matthew slammed into Haiti, killing at least 1,000 people according to a tally of numbers from local officials, devastated corners of the nation are facing a public health crisis as cholera gallops through rural communities lacking clean water, food and shelter. Reuters visited the Port-a-Piment hospital early on Sunday morning, the first day southwestern Haiti’s main coastal road had become navigable by car.

At that time, there were 39 cases of cholera, medical director Missole Antoine said. By the early afternoon, there were nearly 60, and four people had died of the waterborne illness. “That number is going to rise,” said Antoine, as she rushed between patients laid out on the hospital floor. Although there were 13 cases of cholera before Matthew hit, Antoine said the cases had risen drastically since the hurricane cut off the desperately poor region. The hospital lacks an ambulance, or even a car, and Antoine said many new patients were coming from kilometers away, carried by family members on camp beds.

A woman on Sunday walks on debris left behind after Hurricane Matthew devastated Port-a-Piment, Haiti.​

Inside the hospital, grim-faced parents cradled young children, whose eyes had sunk back and were unable to prop up their own heads. “I believe in the doctors and also in God,” said 37-year-old Roosevelt Dume, holding the head of his son, Roodly, as he tried to remain upbeat. Out on the streets, the scene was also shocking. For kilometers, almost all the houses were reduced to little more than rubble and twisted metal. Colorful clothes were littered among the chaos. The region’s banana crop was destroyed, with vast fields flattened into a leafy mush. With neither government or foreign aid arriving quickly, people were relying on felled coconuts for food and water. The stench of death, be it human or animal, was everywhere.

In the village of Labei, near Port-a-Piment, locals said the river had washed down cadavers from villages upstream. With nobody coming to move the corpses, residents used planks of driftwood to push them down the river and into the sea. Down by the shore, the corpse of one man lay blistering in the sun. A few hundred meters to his left in a roadside gully, three dead goats stewed in the toxic slime. “It seems to me like a nuclear bomb went off,” said Paul Edouarzin, a UN Environmental Program employee based near Port-a-Piment. “In terms of destruction — environmental and agricultural — I can tell you 2016 is worse than 2010,” he added, referring to the devastating 2010 earthquake from which Haiti has yet to recover.

Diarrhea-stricken residents in the village of Chevalier were well aware of the nearby cholera outbreak, but had little option except to drink the brackish water from the local well that they believed was already contaminated by dead livestock. “We have been abandoned by a government that never thinks of us,” Marie-Ange Henry said, as she surveyed her smashed home. She said Chevalier had yet to receive any aid and many, like her, were coming down with fever. Cholera, she feared, was on its way. Pierre Moise Mongerard, a pastor, was banking on divine assistance to rescue his roofless church in the village of Torbeck. In his Sunday best — a sports coat, chinos and brown leather shoes — he joined a small choir in songs that echoed out into the surrounding rice fields.

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300 patients with festering wounds in the seaside village of Dame Marie lay waiting for medicine...

Health conditions worsen as aid trickles into remote Haiti
October 11, 2016 — In this most western tip of Haiti, 300 patients with festering wounds lay silently on beds at the main hospital in the seaside village of Dame Marie waiting for medicine a week after Hurricane Matthew hit the remote peninsula.

Among the injured was Beauvoir Luckner, a cobbler and farmer who walked 12 kilometers (7 miles) in three days after a tree fell on his house, crushing his leg and killing his mother. The leg might have to be amputated, but all doctors can do is clean his wounds because the hospital has run out of everything, including painkillers. "There's no water, no antibiotics," Dr. Herby Jean told The Associated Press. "Everything is depleted ... We hear helicopters flying overhead, but we're not getting anything." There was also no power and frustration grew on Tuesday as food, medicine and fresh water kept arriving at the main city in Haiti's southwest peninsula but was slow to reach increasingly desperate communities like Dame Marie.

Luckner lay on a mattress with no sheets and a bandage around his left leg. "It took a lot of misery to get here and now that I'm here, there's still misery," he said. Meanwhile, at a cramped police station serving as a makeshift clinic in the nearby town of Marfranc, Darline Derosier fastened IV drips to jail cell bars, wiped the brows of cholera patients and tended to the wounds of those injured in the storm. She was the only health worker helping about 40 patients inside the station bereft of police as she waited for help to arrive. Among the patients was an elderly woman lying unconscious on a jail cell floor with a leg bandaged in an old rag and a man with gashes around his neck, his eyes fluttering. "People will die soon if we don't get some aid," an overwhelmed Derosier told the AP.

Aid organizations say they're trying. Dr. Dominique Legros, a top cholera official at the World Health Organization, said Tuesday that the agency had decided to send 1 million doses of cholera vaccine to Haiti "as soon as possible" and said safe drinking water and treatment of those affected by the disease are top priorities. Earlier, the U.N. humanitarian agency in Geneva made an emergency appeal for nearly $120 million in aid, saying about 750,000 people in southwest Haiti alone will need "life-saving assistance and protection" in the next three months. U.N. officials have said earlier that at least 1.4 million people across the region need assistance and that 2.1 million overall have been affected by the hurricane. Some 175,000 people remain in shelters.

The National Civil Protection headquarters in Port-au-Prince raised the official nationwide death toll to 372, which included at least 198 deaths in Grand-Anse. But local officials have said the toll in Grand-Anse alone tops 500. Experts also said the hurricane has increased the risk of a spike in cases of cholera, which has already killed roughly 10,000 people and sickened more than 800,000 since 2010. "In this context of the hurricane, and therefore flooding, therefore potential contamination of the drinking water by fecal sludge, we are quite concerned about the risk of further increase of cholera cases," the WHO's Legros told reporters in Geneva.

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Cholera in Haiti after Hurricane Matthew...

Haitians await aid, help each other regain some normalcy
October 11, 2016 -- People throughout Haiti's devastated southwest peninsula formed makeshift brigades Tuesday to clear debris and try to regain some semblance of their pre-hurricane lives as anger grew over the delay in aid for remote communities more than a week after the Category 4 storm hit.

A community group that formed in the southern seaside community of Les Anglais began clearing tree limbs from streets and placing them into piles while others gathered scraps of wood to start rebuilding homes destroyed by Hurricane Matthew. Carpenter James Nassau donned a white construction helmet as he rebuilt a neighbor's wall with recycled wood, hoping to earn a little money to take care of 10 children, including those left behind by his brother, who died in the storm. "My brother left five kids, and now I've got to take care of them," he said. "Nobody has come to help."

The scene repeated itself across small seaside and mountain villages dotting the peninsula, where people pointed out helicopters buzzing overhead and questioned why they haven't received any help. Israel Banissa, a carpenter who lives near the small mountain town of Moron, said a Red Cross assessment team stopped outside his village to ask people questions but didn't leave any supplies. "There's no aid that's come here," he said as he sawed wood to help rebuild his home and dozens of others. "I don't think they care about the people up here."

The U.N. humanitarian agency in Geneva has made an emergency appeal for nearly $120 million in aid, saying about 750,000 people in southwest Haiti alone will need "life-saving assistance and protection" in the next three months. U.N. officials said earlier that at least 1.4 million people across the region need assistance and that 2.1 million overall have been affected by the hurricane. Some 175,500 people remain in shelters. The National Civil Protection headquarters in Port-au-Prince raised the official nationwide death toll to 473, which included at least 244 deaths in Grand-Anse. But local officials have said the toll in Grand-Anse alone tops 500. Those who survived the storm still faced great challenges, including going days without food.

Elancie Moise, an agronomist and director for the Department of Agriculture in southern Haiti, said between 80 to 100 percent of crops have been lost across the southern peninsula. "Crisis is not the word to describe it," he said. "You need a stronger word. It is much worse. There is no food for people to eat." Food was slowly reaching remote communities, but there was also a growing need for medical supplies. In the western seaside village of Dame Marie, patients with festering wounds lay silently on beds at the main hospital waiting for medicine a week after the storm hit.

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Medics dash to rural Haiti as cholera kills 13 in Matthew's wake
Sat Oct 8, 2016 | Cholera has killed at least 13 people in southwest Haiti in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, officials said on Saturday, as government teams fanned out across the hard-hit southwestern tip of the country to repair treatment centers and reach the epicenter of one outbreak.

The storm took the lives of nearly 900 people in Haiti, many in remote towns clustered near the headland, according to a Reuters tally of numbers given by local officials. Haiti's central civil protection agency raised to 336 its official death toll, a slower count because officials must visit each village to confirm the numbers. The government said there would be three days of national mourning. Six people died of cholera in a hospital in the town of Randel, which is inland on the peninsula, and another seven died in the coastal town of Anse-d'Ainault on the western tip, the officials said, likely as flood waters mixed with sewage.

A woman carries a child as they walk in front of destroyed houses after Hurricane Matthew passes Jeremie, Haiti​

Cholera causes severe diarrhea and can kill within hours if untreated. It is spread through contaminated water and has a short incubation period, which leads to rapid outbreaks. "Randel is isolated, you must cross water, you must go high in the mountains, cars cannot go, motorcycles cannot go,” said Eli Pierre Celestin, a member of team that fights cholera for the health ministry. "People have started dying." "There are nurses but no doctors," he said, concerned that cholera would spread due to lack of hygiene and as ground water moved because of rain and floods.

He said there were also outbreaks in Port-a-Piment and Les Anglais, towns at the end of the Tiburon peninsula hardest hit by Matthew this week. Dr. Donald Francois, head of the Haitian health ministry´s cholera program, said 62 others were sick with cholera as a result of the storm. He said he was traveling to the south to oversee the response. Matthew slammed into South Carolina on Saturday, after skirting the Atlantic coast of Florida and Georgia, causing widespread power outages and flooding.

CLINICS DESTROYED

 

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Anti-cholera campaign begun in Haiti after Hurricane Matthew...

Combating Cholera Urgent Part of Haiti's Hurricane Recovery
October 12, 2016 - As Haiti continues to count its dead and assess damage following devastating Hurricane Matthew, doctors and public health officers warn the risk of cholera must urgently be addressed.

Unprecedented flooding, particularly in the hard-hit southwestern peninsula, has contaminated already-scarce safe drinking water, drastically increasing the risk of a cholera outbreak. Once contracted, dehydration caused by cholera can kill children in as quickly as six hours. "Essentially, the battle against cholera is sometimes a race against time," said Dr. Unni Krishnan of Save the Children. "It’s a very fast killer and we need to act quickly."

The daughter of 84-year-old Armant Germain replaces the sheets on her bed, in the cholera ward at a hospital in Les Cayes Haiti​

Dr. Krishnan has worked around Haiti for 10 years, traveling to wherever he is most needed. He is currently working in Les Cayes, the city the hardest hit last week by Hurricane Matthew. "When you come to some of the impacted areas you realize how bad the situation is," he told VOA. "It’s something which can never be truly captured in words or pictures."

Contaminated drinking water

Contamination of drinking water is far from the only thing increasing the risk of cholera throughout Haiti. Among many others, Dr. Krishnan said a lack of privacy due to destroyed homes has resulted in women breast feeding less often, and breast milk is a powerful natural antidote to cholera for infants. Cholera is treatable, and the most common and dangerous symptom is dehydration. But lack of infrastructure and hospitals, made worse by the hurricane damage, could make combating an epidemic difficult for Haiti. "For context, we are talking about a country with one of the weakest health systems in this part of the world," Dr. Krishnan said, emphasizing that many medical centers were destroyed or rendered non-functional due to the storm damage.

United Nations police from Bangladesh deliver drinking water to residents of Sous-Roche village, outside Les Cayes, Haiti​

The hope for Haiti in the face of cholera lies in lessons learned, following a 2010 earthquake, after which Haiti suffered the worst cholera outbreak in modern history, according to the Center for Disease Control. Nearly 10,000 people in Haiti died of the treatable disease. The international community bears the burden as well. The U.N. publicly took responsibility for bringing Virbrio cholerae, the bacteria which causes cholera, through Nepalese peacekeepers who went to the island nation following the earthquake.

New UN measures

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WHO Sends Cholera Vaccine to Haiti, Hopes to Prevent Epidemic
October 11, 2016 — The World Health Organization is rushing an oral cholera vaccine and other essential treatments to Haiti to try to prevent an epidemic of the fatal disease among victims of Hurricane Matthew.

WHO cholera expert, Dominique Legros, warns that the risk of cholera increasing is great because heavy flooding left by Hurricane Matthew is likely to contaminate the water. In Haiti, Interim President Jocelerme Privert said 13 people have died of cholera since the hurricane hit, CNN reported. Rene Domersant of the Haitian Health Ministry said there are 128 confirmed cases of cholera and 160 suspected cases in the country, UPI reported. Cholera is transmitted through contaminated water or food. It causes diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to death through dehydration. “The top priority clearly for those people affected by the hurricane is to give them access to safe water,” Legros said. “That is the only way we can control cholera in the long term in Haiti and elsewhere."

A boy rests his arm on his mother's legs as he receives treatment for cholera after Hurricane Matthew in the Hospital of Les Anglais, Haiti​

For those who are sick with cholera, the top priority is to treat them and give them access to treatment, he added. It is particularly concerning, he said, because 35 of Haiti’s 197 health care facilities were damaged by the hurricane. The United Nations estimates more than 2 million people have been affected by the disaster, with 1.4 million in need of humanitarian assistance. To keep a possible cholera epidemic in check, the World Health Organization is sending 1 million doses of oral cholera vaccine to Haiti. Legros says there are two options for using the vaccine. “We can use it the classic strategy with two doses, therefore, we would cover half a million people,” he said. “We can also go for a single dose campaign, which will be easier to implement and that would add coverage for 1 million people, twice as many. The problem with the single dose campaign is that the protection is going to be relatively short.”

Legros noted that the single dose route would protect more people during the rainy season from November to January, which is the peak of cholera transmission in Haiti. He says he will travel to Haiti this week to discuss the best course to take with WHO’s partners and the government. U.N. Nepalese peacekeepers introduced cholera into earthquake-devastated Haiti in 2010. Since then, the World Health Organization reports there have been nearly 800,000 cases of this fatal disease, including 9,300 deaths. This year, the U.N. agency reports nearly 30,000 cholera cases in Haiti.

WHO Sends Cholera Vaccine to Haiti, Hopes to Prevent Epidemic

 

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Desperate people doin' desperate things...

Aid trucks looted in Haiti as United Nations assesses damage
Oct. 16, 2016 -- An angry mob in Haiti looted aid trucks Saturday as U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was visiting the island to observe the devastation left by Hurricane Matthew. The hurricane killed 900 people.

The skirmish broke out before Ban's arrival at the U.N. base in Les Cayes. The trucks looted were carrying food. The U.N. police force fired teargas to restore order. A World Health Organization coordinator said two containers carrying supplies from the World Food Program also were looted, VOAnews.com reported. Ban urged other countries to donate as much as they could, BBC reported.

Humanitarian agencies have said that more than 1.4 million people need help in Haiti. In addition to the destruction left by the hurricane, there are growing fears of cholera. Already, spikes in cases of the waterborne disease have been reported in the southwest parts of the island nation. Following the deadly earthquake in Haiti in 2010, cholera killed nearly 10,000 people.

Despite the looting, Ban was touched by the devastation in Haiti. "I met so many displaced persons, young people, women who were pregnant and sick people. It was heartbreaking," the secretary-general said after a visit to an emergency shelter for families left with no homes after Matthew's winds and rain pummeled the island.

More than 175,000 people lost their homes and what little farmland was left on the southwest portion of the island. "We will mobilize all the resources to help you," Ban told those suffering the hurricane's aftermath. "Stay strong." Ban left Haiti for Equador late Saturday.

Aid trucks looted in Haiti as United Nations assesses damage

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US Military Relief in Haiti is Part Logistics, Part Negotiation
Oct 15, 2016 | From above, it looks like winter, though it is 85 degrees. Trees are sticks with bare branches, the earth patchy and pale.

Soon the barren landscape gives way to a more devastating story of the destruction of Hurricane Matthew, which swept through Haiti's southwest peninsula Oct. 4. Beneath the rudders of the U.S. Army Chinook helicopter, villages in the west look like garbage dumps, and houses sit naked with gaping holes where their corrugated tin roofs used to be. On the ground, overwhelmed villagers in Anse-D'Hainault gather on a ridge as the second of two Chinooks lands on a muddy patch of grass. At one corner, three men stop work they are doing to rebuild a house that's been reduced to an empty shell. "Everything, everything," said one of the men, pointing to piles of muddy, ruined clothing strewn over the hillside. It's all lost.

It's been almost two weeks since Hurricane Matthew tore through here, leaving at least 546 dead, more than 175,000 displaced and 1.4 million people in need of assistance. Most of the crops are gone; livestock was decimated. The hardest hit villages were at the western tip of the peninsula, known as the Grand-Anse and the Sud regions, where 90 percent of homes were destroyed, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

U.S. Marines and sailors load relief supplies onto helicopters at Port-au-Prince, Haiti​

U.S. sailors and Marines get right to work, unloading giant jugs of water and boxes containing bags of saline. As the disaster moves through its second week, villages blocked by floods and downed trees are becoming more reachable by road, so they are getting much-needed food. But cholera, best treated with saline IVs, is becoming the new urgent crisis, officials say. U.S. servicemembers operating under Joint Task Force Matthew have been offloading supplies from aircraft and trucks at a hub near the flight line of Haiti's international airport in Port-au-Prince, then loading them onto U.S. military helicopters - Army Chinooks and Marine Corps Black Hawks and Ospreys -- that deliver to the hardest-hit areas.

It's back-breaking work - slinging bags of rice and peas in 90-degree heat -- with more than 400 servicemembers helping to distribute nearly 1.1 million pounds of supplies from the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID.

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Here we go again...

Expert calls UN response to cholera in Haiti 'a disgrace'
Oct 25,`16 -- A U.N. human rights expert strongly criticized the United Nations on Tuesday for denying legal responsibility for the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti caused by U.N. peacekeepers, calling it "a disgrace" and urging the world body to issue an apology and accept responsibility.

Philip Alston said in a report submitted to the U.N. General Assembly that "deeply flawed" and unfounded legal advice provided by U.N. lawyers is preventing the organization from accepting responsibility for the outbreak, which has sickened nearly 800,000 Haitians and killed some 9,300. He said the U.N.'s existing legal approach "of simply abdicating responsibility is morally unconscionable, legally indefensible and politically self-defeating."

Alston said the good news is that under Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's "courageous leadership" a trust fund aimed at raising at least $400 million to eradicate cholera and help victims has been set up. He urged all countries to contribute generously. "The bad news is that the U.N. has still not admitted factual or legal responsibility, and has not offered a legal settlement as required by international law," he said. "The U.N.'s explicit and unqualified denial of anything other than a moral responsibility is a disgrace," Alston said. "If the United Nations bluntly refuses to hold itself accountable for human rights violations, it makes a mockery of its efforts to hold governments and others to account."

Australian-born Alston, a law professor at New York University, is the U.N.'s independent expert on extreme poverty and human rights, appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council. He presented his report to the General Assembly's human rights committee Tuesday. Haiti's Minister-Counselor Patrick Saint-Hiliaire thanked Alston "for his courage," saying "this report gives hope." He stressed that "truth and responsibility can only elevate the position of the United Nations," and urged the U.N. to demonstrate "political will" by mobilizing the resources for compensation. Researchers say cholera was first detected in Haiti's central Artibonite Valley and cite evidence that it was introduced to the country's biggest river from a U.N. base where Nepalese troops were deployed as part of a peacekeeping operation which has been in the country since 2004. Cholera is endemic in Nepal.

For years the U.N. denied or remained silent on longstanding allegations that it was responsible for the outbreak, while responding to lawsuits in U.S. courts by claiming immunity under a 1946 convention. In August, a U.S. appeals court upheld the United Nations' immunity from a lawsuit filed on behalf of 5,000 Haitian cholera victims who blame the U.N. for the epidemic. Secretary-General Ban said immediately after that ruling that he "deeply regrets the suffering" that cholera has caused and "the United Nations has a moral responsibility to the victims." He announced that the U.N. was working on a package that would provide "material assistance." Details of the $400 million package were announced on Monday.

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