Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Why cholera persists in Haiti despite an abundance of aid

It's been more than three years since cholera struck Haiti. And the epidemic continues today.

The deadly bacteria have killed more than 8,500 people and infected hundreds of thousands.

Why has the outbreak been so hard to stop, even with more than $9 million in foreign aid pledged to Haiti?

Lack of sanitation, says journalist Jonathan Katz, who has been covering the cholera epidemic since it began.

Haiti doesn't have sewers. Instead, the country relies on what's known as the bayakou: independent, and somewhat secretive, laborers who clean the cesspools under people's latrines.

"Almost all of them are men ... and they work in a very interesting way," Katz says. "The job is done by hand. They climb into the latrines with a bucket. They scoop out the excrement and put it somewhere else."

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