What Actions Now Will Stop Cholera in Haiti?

Indeed, I can't understand how it has been allowed to get this bad.
Surely it would have been feasible and better to build a few roads into suitable areas, lay in water and sanitation and allocate building materials or simple pre-fab builings to house the people. Even a shanty town with water and sanitation would be preferable to the complete lack of joined up effort.
It's the old give a man a fishing rod not a fish thing...
Your homework boys and girls...
Compare and contrast Haiti with the Chilean miners rescue in not more than 500 words. I want them on my ER's desk by this time tomorrow
Del

The problem is that you are not starting with a flat green space from which to work. Port au Prince is a sprawling city of nearly 3 million originally built to accommodate 200,000. The population density as high as many places in the world such as Shanghai. Secondly is on the side of very rugged terrain with very little soil, and bedrock at the surface in many places. How do you route roads, water lines and sewer lines through densely occupied areas through solid rock? It is not a simple problem with a simple solution and coupled with the high price of materials (because everything is imported) there is now cheap solution.

The biggest problem now is political. Most people in Port au Prince never owned land. They either rent it from the rich bourgeois or squat on land owned by others. To make matters worse, the few records of land ownership that did exist were destroyed by the Jan 11 earthquake. The problem now is the people that need the housing, have no land and the bourgeois that have the land do not want the people to build on it unless they can pay exorbitant rent which of course they can not.

The only real solution is for the government to confiscate land and then somehow redistribute it. This will undoubtedly result in a revolution which will bring the rath of foreign governments down upon Haiti and they will be accused of having an unstable government and some benevolent foreign power will intervene and save the Haitians from themselves.

There is no simplistic solution and without addressing the entire problem everything is futile.

I'm broke. How exactly did Haiti become my problem?

First it's aids. Was it impossible to explain to these people that sex passes aids?

I personally don't think they are that stupid.

So, if we assume they're not stupid, they just don't give a crap.

I don't mean to sound cruel, but WTF. The only damn thing these people seem to have energy for, is sex.

Times was tough when I had two babies......now I gots ten, somebody help me.

It certainly didn't have to happen, holding tanks and bleach would have done the trick, and could have been implemented immediately. Makes one wonder if the international community isn't intentionally allowing a mass die off. Certainly would simplify the logistics and cost of rebuilding.

http://www.newjerusalem.com/PureWater.htm

There is some Cowboy short story I read years ago by Larner? - the jist of which is that an innocent is manipulated into a murder that is unjust, and finds out after the fact.

I remember being told a story of murder by a pilot of another using a barometric bomb, and saying, "Ah come on, he wouldn't really do that." -He did.

Some things people do are really hard to believe. I believe Clinton is on record as destroying rice farmers in Haiti with rice policies of his as governor of Arkansas.

Within the Shipping Container Housing tread we were made aware of the water selling industry of Haiti. It's a sordid story come to fruition in disease and death.

There is a ring in some of the story of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Clemson University did work on shipping container housing designs. They also had people there working on water.

Even allied with Clemson, our White Paper seems to have gone no where.

Solutions to the suffering in Haiti are in the paper CR4 members produced, though now complicated by more disease, instead of less.

You would think by now that internationally all nations would at least fight against diseases since they can really wipe you out, along with your enemies due to the nature of disease.

" I believe Clinton is on record as destroying rice farmers in Haiti with rice policies of his as governor of Arkansas."

Arkansas produces more rice than any other state in the union. Clinton was just doing his job and protecting his constituents.

I did some poking around on the internet after I posted.

As has always been the case in Haiti, a huge part of the problem is corruption within the Haitian government. The money and relief coming in are not getting to the people that need it.

It's quite possible that the Haitian govt itself is allowing a mass die off. Relief money could then be used to build a new presidential mansion. With the rest of the money being distributed among the ruling elite.

If the US were to try to do more, we'd have to side step the Haitian govt and once again, we would be labeled as occupiers.

Don't asume that because the money was pledged that it was ever delivered. Until just very recently ALL of the money that the US government pledged was still sitting in a bank and not delivered. And now only a few hundred million has been sent.

I know a few hundred million sounds like lot but stop and think. In a country with 9 million (pre-earthquake) population $180 million results in only $20 per person. what kind on infrastructre to build water systems or sewer systems can you build in a developed country for $20? In Haiti wher everything has to be imported the delivered cost of materials is sky high. Everyone throws stones at the corrupt government in Haiti, but fro personal observation, I wonder if it is more or less than here in the US. We call it earmarks they are accused of corruption. At the end of the day, what is the difference?

It's been 10 months since we warned against this very problem rearing it's ugly head in Haiti, and still nothing is happening on a grand scale to alleviate the temporary housing, safe drinking water and waste disposal shortfalls that had been addressed in the CR4 White Paper....

I blame a whole host of folks for dropping the ball on this one: for starters the US Government, THE MEDIA (all types), USAID, the UN, the American Red Cross, the International Red Cross, the Haitian Government, and the remainder of the thieving NGO's. In the end game human greed has won out again....as usual!

Even IF some of our ideas had been implemented we (the world stage) would not be witnessing this tragedy unfolding before our eyes.....cholera outbreaks could have been avoided with proper water supply and sanitation.

Just seeing this on the network news and in the papers is "Toasting my Rice Krispies" fur sur.......

My last post wasn't very nice, but it is something I wonder about. Wherever in the world there are starving people, they always seem to be surrounded by children.

If I didn't have enough food, my #1 priority, aside from finding food, would be to stop procreating.

I believe there is something sinister going on in Haiti that we're not privy to. Like I posted, some cheap household bleach, distributed through the nation would have prevented cholera from ever breaking out in the first place.

If the Haitian government and the international community intends to just let them die, it would far more humane to just bomb them. As horrible as that sounds, it's true.

I'm going to Haiti in January and again in March. If you would like to join us you can help backpack gallon jugs of bleach to my friends that live two hours by four wheel drive vehicle and then a two hour hike. Oh by the way we need to do it about once month for them and the 1000 people that live in their village. The all inclusive cost of the trip is $1,600 for all the beans and rice you can eat and all the hot dusty work you want for seven days under the Son.

IN HIS SERVICE

DAVE

Due to some legal, health, and economic challenges I cannot commit to your January Haiti trip. I do suggest you review the Shipping Container Housing for Haiti thread. We did become aware of Clemson U work on shelter and water.

You may want to consult with them about what is possible as best all round.

Personally my study recommends the purchase of Haiti, in its entirety, and then deeded grants and sales along with a reduction in the dependent population by at least half.

Islands cannot support but so many people in good health and circumstances.

How do you reduce dependent population by50%?

We discussed options mostly looking towards places of language and culture such as Louisiana. I ended up looking at Ireland which reduced its population through emigration during the Potato Famine, or Great Starvation. Population of Ireland is still only about half what it was. Actually laws and situation are more similar than you might expect.

You can also look at Puerto Rico for precedents.

Two things:

I have lived in Louisiana and Spent a lot of time in Haiti and the language and culture are not even close. Creole and Kreyol are not similar.

Second, the State Department will never allow even limited immigration from Haiti to America let alone a mass exodus. Our stated policy has been overtly oppressive since January 2 1804 due to our fear and racism. The US government was not inrerested in seriously helping the Haitians in 1804 and beyond garnering good press we are not interested in helping then now unless there is a financial advantage to US business like the rice farmer in Arkansas of textile businesses in South Carolina.

Don't be fooled by the empty rhetoric.

What adds up from what you know?

It's an out of the way small place with twice carrying capacity, majority uneducated, speaking languages in little use in the hemisphere they are in.

What solutions do you suggest?

What Haiti needs more than anything is self determination. From the beginning of their history as a sovereign nation, foreign powers have intervened in their "business" far too many times.

It started with nonrecognition of their independence in 1804 fueled by US fear of the revolution of black slaves against their European masters which included a naval blockade by France, Canada, and the US which did not end until 1826 when Haiti finally agreed to pay cash retribution in return for the freedom they won by defeating Napolean. It continued with US occupation instigated by President Wilson because of his fear of German domination of the Caribbean. This included the appointment of a Southern racist as governor who ripped up the Haitian Constitution and the implementation of one written by Wilson and the enslavery of 100,000 Hatians in chain gangs doing road construction. It continued after World War II with the insertion of the Duvaliers because of Eisenhower's fear of communism. Most recently it has been economic exploitation by Clinton (which he now admits to destroy Haitian agriculture in order to establish "free trade" with Arkansas rice farmers.

We need to get over our fear of this peaceful, impoverished nation and allow them self determination. By a continuing cycle of bashing them into economic obliteration and then "saving" them, we need to BUTT OUT of their business and stop creating another entitlement program.

Undoubtedly some kind of social welfare directed toward helping them over the hurdle we have put in front of them will be required to level the playing field give them the resource to govern themselves but we have to be careful not to create an entitlement environment.

It's a nice enough Summary, and we were made aware of it during the Shipping Container thread. I did come to feel from where I am, that there was a Light Bright or Near White racism and hierarchy at work among the Haitians themselves.

Similar racism existed within Black society in the US in the 19th and 20th Century.

Haitians have tried to emigrate to the US, or France, or wherever for decades.

Certainly treatment of Cubans by the US has been markedly different.

My study from where I am lead to a study of the history of Ireland, and Puerto Rico as precedents for improvements in the situation of Haiti.

The situation seems now to be that the nation which has few natural resources, is over populated. It's economy seems now to revolve around money spent by NGOs, and the UN who obviously failed to prevent a preventable disease directly attributable to how what money there has been was spent on water.

We were aware that much money has been spent on bottled water. We were aware that water there has been essentially stolen for years by unregulated water trucking enterprises, and for that actual "muscle" was required to change.

Muscle there as controlled by their own government does not seem up to that, nor does the recent record of the UN, indicate willingness to do what needs to be done.

In reality it was a CR4 White Paper. Possibly Roger Pink in his attempt to push existentialism as a cause for modern time events is more important for its thesis that we share responsibility for disasters cause we think in a tree and forest way.

Globalspec failed to support the CR4 White Paper you know...

In fact I got a call reporting threats by those that controlled profits from water in Haiti to some of us.

But what to do now? Mail a bottle of Clorox to Haiti?

Yair there are too many there in Haiti for the place. The in your face international conspiracy is really simply not to let Haitians leave Haiti.

Continental Drift by Russell Banks is suggested reading for a perspective on Haiti, and how long this disaster has been going on.