Haiti The Continuing Disaster

The Vibrio cholerae bacteria/photo courtesy Wikipedia

Oh, I am so mad right now, originally when I sat down this evening I was going to talk about the civilian trial of terrorist Ahmed Khalfan Ghailiani who was orginally brought to trial on 285 terrorist charges only to be found guilty of 1, OK I'm say nothing else as I'm so mad right now anything I would write wouldn't be any good.

So I am going to turn to the horrible Cholera outbreak in Haiti, in doing so first let's find out what Cholera actually is, I've heard main stream media cover somewhat lightly so let's see what the definition that doctors recognize.

Cholera:  is a serious infectious disease caused by the bacteria Vibrio Cholerae, which affects the intestinal system of the body. An infected person experiences severe vomiting, explosive diarrhea and severe dehydration, without immediate medical treatment, Cholera may result in death withing four to twelve hours after symptoms begin. Due to a large loss of body fluids, Cholera is gruesome in the way that it leaves survivors in their physical appearance, as well as in the biological toll it takes on the body.

The new Cholera numbers have come out today and shows that there has been 1,110 have died and 18,383 people have been sick in Haiti, however it has now spread with one case in Florida and one case in the Dominican Republic, I do want it to be known though that those two case originated in Haiti but officials are worried because it is contagious.  In Florida state health officials are on the alert because presently 241,000 Haiti-born residents live there.

In the Dominican Republic officials have been ready for possible cases in their country since they do share an island with Haiti and are not expecting a significant breakout of the disease.  US worries in the Dominican Republic is that it  is the second most visited country in the Caribbean by Americans  second only behind Cancun, Mexico. The State Department estimates as of August of this year approximately 900,000 US tourist's have visited the Dominican Republic so health officials in the US are keeping a close watch on people returning from either Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
The last Cholera out break in the western hemisphere was back in 1991which started in Peru and spread to sixteen other countries from Argentina to Canada, from 1991 to 1997 650,000 people became sick in Peru alone during that epidemic. Analyzing how the Cholera spread in 1991 the UN is predicting up to 250,000 people sick.

There is a vaccine however as it happens in many third world countries health officials complain that that vaccine is to expensive for general use, plus it would be very problematic to mobilize the entire population to receive the vaccine, now isn't this the same excuse we hear all over the world about why people are dieing all over the world because vaccines are to expensive to vaccinate a countries population against a peculiar disease. That is how it is in this greedy world now, money is more important than lives, makes me sick.

On another issue that has risen from this outbreak is that Haiti citizens have been rioting blaming the UN for the Cholera outbreak, I guess there has been rumors that peace keepers from the nation of Nepal came to Haiti already sick and are spreading it in Haiti, and although the UN denies such a report, some UN officials and soldiers have been attacked, hospitals have reported at least 6 people coming to them with gunshot wounds to various areas of the body, but it hasn't been disclosed if the wounded were UN Peace Keepers or Haitians.  I personally don't like the UN but right now sympathy's go out to the peacekeepers trying to do their job in that type of climate.