Is Haiti's deadly cholera outbreak an imported disease?

"(S)ome observers fault the US for in the past blocking funds to improve Haiti's water systems. In 2001, in response to the policies of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the US blocked the Inter-American Development Bank from loaning $54 million to assist Haiti's public-water system.

The report "WÃ ²ch nan Soley: The Denial of the Right to Water in Haiti," found that "the United States actively impeded the Haitian government's capacity to fulfill Haitians' human right to water through its actions, thus breaching its duty to respect human rights." (Haiti cholera outbreak 'stabilizing' but could affect election.)

The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) would like to make a positive difference but we do not have monetary resources to purchase these or similar all-inclusive water/ electricity/ communication units for the villagers. Something like this Max-Pure-01 system is what is necessary as well as information on how to prevent cholera and reliable self-help info on natural herbal remedies if infected. We're coming to the Ezili Network and asking for a partnership with others in the Diaspora, at home and in the conscious community worldwide. But if you've looking for the International Community to finance permanent clean drinking water for the masses, that doesn't come from a bottle or purification pill to be purchased from USAID's profiteering contractors making a killing off the poverty business, you're too unconscious to help anyone. Kindly don't contact us with your contributions to "saving lives" while promoting dependency in Haiti. For Haiti's problems are rooted in "aid" administered in the context of patronage and dependence aimed at perpetuating oppression and exploitation.

But if you understand the poverty business will not leave any permanent good or infrastruture in Haiti, like self-renewing, permanent clean drinking water, because that would make their presence obsolete, then we could work together. We'd like help to mobilize the conscious community to provide self-reliant, permanent source of clean drinking water for the people DYING in Haiti. Please let us know how we may use the Ezili Network to help. These environmentally conscious, solar-powered systems, along with bulldozers, tractors and heavy equipment for removing rubble should have already been in Haiti at least a month after the earthquake. But humanitarian aid is profit business and though the technology and equipment exist to alleviate the common person's sufferings worldwide, none of the policymakers with checkbook power are in the business of saving lives unless its profitable or meets US Empire incessant resource warfare and big-business interests.

Remember, all the International Community will do with this cholera outbreak is blame it on the "diseased Haitians" to perpetuate their existence in Haiti; rehash this disinformation and colonial narrative ad nausea to continue to contain Haiti in perpetual dependence, death, misery and poverty; distract from the uncomfortable questions of "where are the donation dollars and reconstruction monies"; use the occasion to solicit more monies to buy their own country's antibiotics, dehydration pills or bottled water leaving no permanently renewable clean water infrastructure in Haiti as usual. Or, suppressed the number of Haitians dying in order to make themselves look good because they KEPT the earthquake donations collecting interest in the NGO/charitable organization's coffers for "future use." Almost 300 Haitians, not including those dead from the recent rains, but who've died of cholera now have NO FUTURE and over 3,700 are said to be infected. Here's the de-contextualized refrain: Right now the infection is an epidemic. There has not been such an epidemic in the region for a century...It could kill "tens of thousands" and "likely to remain in Haiti for years to come" (See Cholera Epidemic in Haiti Highlights Deteriorating Conditions | October 22, 2010 - 1:20 PM | by: Steve Harrigan. http://bit.ly/cP1Zmg ; Haiti's first cholera epidemic in a century kills scores, Guardian.co.uk .)

Of course it matters not that the evidence is not yet in as to what's the source of the water and food contamination or if a non-Haitian, such as the UN soldiers or the aid workers, transmitted the disease from their countries or travels into Haiti and are infecting and transmitting to vulnerable and over-stressed Haitians. Haiti is blamed just as it was erroneously blamed and ostracized for originating the HIV virus. The Dominican Republic sealed its border with "cholera-plagued Haiti," presumably so not to be contaminated by the contagious, disease-ridden Haitians.

But, according to a recent news report cholera killed more than 1,500 people and infected nearly 40,000 in Nigeria. Why isn't the DR worried about the Nigerian UN soldiers in Haiti? Nepal also has regular cholera outbreaks and there are Nepalese United Nations soldiers , for instance, participating in the UN mission in Haiti stationed in the regions the cholera outbreak started . (Nepal: Cholera outbreak in Kathmandu, September 23, 2010; Cholera outbreak in Nepal under control, says WHO.)

Just this week ninety-nine cholera cases were confirmed in Pakistan . There are Pakistan UN MINUSTAH soldiers, as well as soldiers from other known cholera regions, stationed in Haiti who also could have come into Haiti with the infection.

The Dominican Republic closing their borders liquidates the jobs and livelihoods of hundreds if not thousands of small Haiti merchants and traders. As if cholera is terminal and not easily treated or is not transmitted by drinking or eating contaminated food/water. Of course, much of Haiti's food and water comes from the Dominican Republic and or from US companies using the DR, so their trucks continue to cross to and from Haiti. Contamination from food or water imported to Haiti by foreigners is not assumed. The Dominican Republic closing its borders, along with the media, UN and WHO making declarations that there is a disease in Haiti that could kill "tens of thousands" and "was likely to remain in Haiti for years to come" even before there were any deaths reported in the crowded refugee camps in the capital almost implies that cholera is a contagious air-borne disease that's not controllable. Informing the public is one thing. But there is a grave danger here for opportunistic and predatory misinformation that Haitians know well.

"Haiti pains are a good capital asset for the NGO industry. They wouldn't have a job, salaries and tropical vacations and the illicit black sex they crave from Africans, without our pains, indignities, death, submissions and sufferings. Imagine swallowing the nutritional supplements, vitamins, vaccines and the other pharmaceuticals USAID insist are "aid to Haiti," when you've not eaten in four days? And the HIV drugs (and now "medicine" and rehydration tablets for cholera) you have to swallow are also washed down with toxic ground water, in some ways also from US/Euro/ Canada gold, copper, oil, iridium, uranium, coal, marble, granite, limestone, aggregate and other mining companies who pollute Haiti's shores and riverbeds. When the earthquake hit, many of us who lived through the two recent US coup d'etats in Haiti, the two Gonaives hurricane destructions of 2004 and then in 2008, knew these poverty pimps, knew they would crank up the press releases and telethons and collect and collect and collect, while the majority of people suffer, lose more, grieve and die in Haiti. In our minds' eye we saw USAID, CRS, CARE, Red Cross, World Vision, et al... sad perhaps, but still calculating and salivating at the huge prospects of monies to be collected from the deaths and brutal suffering of Haitians. It's a profitable gig the poverty pimps are just not about to give up." (See, Poverty Pimps Masturbating on Black Pain: Monsanto Joins pack, May 17, 2010 http://bit.ly/dj4mUc)

"A U.N. Report released in March of 2010 said that dirty water kills more people each year than all forms of violence combined including war. According to the WHO, of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old...80 percent of all disease is caused by lack of basic sanitation and lack of clean water. There are 4,500 kids that die everyday from lack of basic sanitation and water"simple diseases like diarrhea. But (Lane Wood) said, there are some less obvious impacts of drinking dirty water. For example, dirty water can undermine other humanitarian efforts that money and effort have been poured into, like efforts to control AIDS/HIV in Africa. They're going home, they're taking their medicine with bacteria-filled water, and their bodies are not absorbing the medicine." (The Plantation called Haiti: Feudal Pillage Masking as Humanitarian Aid - http://bit.ly/929NXS ; Lane Wood says 2010 earthquake took toll on Haiti's water - http://bit.ly/br88o3)

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