Friday, January 10, 2014

Cholera crisis in Haiti, four years after the earthquake

UN soldiers are thought to have inadvertently started a cholera epidemic in the poverty-stricken island. Channel 4 News reports from the beleaguered country - four years after the earthquake.

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Watching a sickly man spitting into a bucket by his bed while the piercing shrieks of tiny babies in distress ring out around him, it was difficult to comprehend that three years after the outbreak of cholera in Haiti, thousands are still getting ill and dying.

We had come to a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Leogane, a 30 minute drive from the capital Port au Prince, a town which has the unfortunate distinction of being the epicentre of the earthquake. That mega-earthquake claimed an estimated 316,000 lives, according to the government. It was towards the end of 2010, some nine months after the quake, that cholera struck Haiti for the first time.

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