Haiti: cholera victims demand UN compensation

The United Nations has been hit with a demand for hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from Haitian cholera victims.

The Boston, USA-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) filed the demand on behalf of some 5,000 victims.

IJDH is demanding US$ 50,000 in compensation for each sick person and US$ 100,000  for each death. In addition, it wants a public apology and an adequate nationwide response – including medical care and clean water and sanitation infrastructure.

Study suggests UN force brought cholera to Haiti

Evidence “strongly suggests” that a United Nations peacekeeping mission brought a cholera strain to Haiti that has killed thousands of people, a study by a team of epidemiologists and physicians says.

The study is the strongest argument yet that newly-arrived Nepalese peacekeepers at a base near the town of Mirebalais brought with them the cholera, which spread through the waterways of the Artibonite region.

The disease has killed more than 5,500 people and sickened more than 363,000 others since it was discovered in October 2010, according to the Haitian government.

“Our findings strongly suggest that contamination of the Artibonite (river) and 1 of its tributaries downstream from a military camp triggered the epidemic,” said the report in the July 2011 issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

In an email to Associate Press (AP), U.N. mission spokeswoman Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg didn’t comment on the findings of the journal article, referring only to a study released in May by a U.N.-appointed panel.

The article published in the CDC journal comes as health workers in Haiti wrestle with a spike in the number of cholera cases brought on by several weeks of rainfall. The aid group Oxfam said earlier this month that its workers were treating more than 300 new cases a day, more than three times what they saw when the disease peaked in the fall.

The CDC journal article comes as health workers in Haiti wrestle with a spike in the number of cholera cases brought on by several weeks of rainfall. Oxfam said earlier that its workers were treating more than 300 new cases a day, more than three times what they saw when the disease peaked in the fall of 2010.

The new study argues it is important for scientists to determine the origin of cholera outbreaks and how they spread in order to eliminate “accidentally imported disease.” Figuring out the source of a cholera epidemic would help health workers better treat and prevent cholera by minimizing the “distrust associated with the widespread suspicions of a cover-up of a deliberate importation of cholera.”

Read the full article
Piarroux, R. [et al.] (2011). Understanding the cholera epidemic, Haiti. Emerging infectious diseases ; vol. 17, no. 7 ; p. 1161-1167. DOI:10.3201/eid1707.110059

Source: Jonathan M. Katz, AP, 29 Jun 2011

Haiti: UN panel reports on source of cholera outbreak

The cholera outbreak that has so far killed 4,888 people in Haiti was caused by a strain “very similar but not identical” to current South Asian strains, a U.N. independent panel of experts said. The source of the outbreak was due to contamination of the Meye Tributary of the Artibonite River, used by tens of thousands of people for washing, bathing, and drinking.

Many people in Haiti blamed the epidemic on U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal, who had been accused of poor sanitation at their base near Mirebalais, the town where the epidemic first began. In November 2010, this lead to violent protests against the UN peacekeeping forces. Others believed that the outbreak was linked to voodoo. More than 50 voodoo followers have been killed since the outbreak of cholera following accusations that they spread the disease with occult power. However, U.N. panel declined to point the finger at any single group for the outbreak, saying it was the result of a “confluence of circumstances”.

“The introduction of this cholera strain as a result of environmental contamination with faeces could not have been the source of such an outbreak without simultaneous water and sanitation and health-care system deficiencies,” the report concludes.

The UN panel of experts provides several recommendations to the U.N. and the Haitian government including:

• UN staff and other relief workers travelling from cholera-endemic areas should either receive a prophylactic dose of appropriate antibiotics before departure or be screened for cholera strains
• UN peacekeeping missions operating in areas with cholera outbreaks should ensure that staff be immunized with oral vaccines, receive prophylactic antibiotics, or both,
• the UN should install and supervise their own on-site sanitation systems that inactivate pathogens before disposal
• the Haitian Government and the UN should prioritise investing in piped, treated drinking water supplies and better sanitation throughout the country; and until this can be put in place, they should promote household water treatment, hand washing with soap, and the safe disposal of faecal waste.

Read the full report of the UN Independent Panel of Experts on the Cholera Outbreak in Haiti.

According to estimates from the Health and WASH Clusters, US$ 39.38 million is still neededto respond to essential needs of the cholera response in the areas of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and health. This unfunded requirement is part of the general US$ 175 million cholera appeal which is so far 48 per cent funded, according to the latest UN Humanitarian Bulletin for Haiti.

Source: UN News Centre, 04 May 2011 ; AP / New York Times, 04 May 2011 ; Evelyn Leopold, Huffington Post, 05 May 2011 ;   Reliefweb, 07 May 2011 ; Rory Carroll, Guardian, 18 Nov 2010