Haiti: image via Wikipedia
After diplomats confirmed yesterday that the cholera outbreak in Haiti had been brought in by UN personnel from Nepal, cases have also been detected in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.
While the UN is still denying that its troops from Nepal have introduced the disease, it seems that they are carrying out some mis-judged PR exercise in the face of the following:
- the cholera strain found in Haiti is that which is endemic in Nepal,
- the UN military camp has had cases,
- Haiti has not seen cases of cholera for over 100 years until this outbreak, and
- the disease has broken out even in areas which were not affected by the earthquake on 12th January.
It would be quite wrong to blame the poor Nepalese soldiers who face endemic cholera at home but it is certainly an indictment of UN systems and processes that over 1000 have died in Haiti which has not seen cholera for over 100 years.
The Dominican Republic has detected its first case of cholera, following the outbreak of the disease in neighbouring Haiti last month.
The patient is a Haitian migrant who had recently returned from his homeland, the health minister said.
The Dominican authorities had stepped up border controls and health checks to try to stop cholera from spreading from Haiti. More than 1,000 Haitians have died of the disease.
Dominican health minister Bautista Rojas said the patient, a 32-year-old Haitian construction worker, was being treated in isolation in the eastern town of Higuey.
Like Haiti, the Dominican Republic had not had a confirmed case of cholera in more than a century until this year.
In Haiti, the government says 1,034 people have died and the disease is still spreading rapidly. The epidemic has provoked fear and anger in Haiti. The country was already struggling to recover from a devastating earthquake in January which killed about 230,000 people in and around the capital Port-au-Prince and shattered its already poor infrastructure. On Monday two people died during violent protests against UN peacekeepers, whom some Haitians accuse of bringing cholera into Haiti. At least one of the men was shot dead by the UN troops.
The UN has said there is no evidence to support allegations that cholera was brought into Haiti by peacekeepers from Nepal, where the disease in endemic.
The k2p blog 