Saturday, December 04, 2010

Cholera in Haiti

Before the earthquake there was no cholera in Haiti. Where did it come from? According to New Scientist it came from Nepalese peacekeeping troops. Cholera, which is carried by feces-tainted water, is endemic in Nepal: there was an outbreak in Kathmandu, the country's capital, just before the peacekeepers flew in from there between 9 and 16 October. Their camp in Mirebalais dumped sewage straight into a stream that led to Haiti's main central river. The first cases were in Mirebalais and downstream, areas barely touched by the earthquake. What is more, the DNA in Haiti's cholera shows it was a single, recent introduction of a strain from south Asia.

The UN is covering up the evidence and is in denial. UN peacekeepers around the world are largely supplied by poor countries, and of the top 15 contributors, which supply 71 per cent of UN troops, 12 harbor cholera.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Had not seen this. Thanks.

UN needs to think about who it sending where and step up to take responsibility and provide the resources to try and address the medical mess they have created.

Once again no medical common sense used and the poorest of the poor suffer.

Anonymous said...

The UN is a waste of money. We should abandon it.

The only purpose of it is for dictatorships like Russia and China, along with third-world countries, to beat up on the West and Israel.