Haiti witnesses declining cholera rates, significant gains in development

UN News Centre: Haiti, often cited as one of the least developed countries in the Western Hemisphere, has reached – or nearly reached – several of the Millennium Development Goals ahead of the 2015 deadline, according to a report launched by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) a month ago.

Among other achievements, the country has seen a steady boost in enrollment rates in primary education from 47 per cent in 1993 to nearly 90 per cent, achieving equal participation of boys and girls in education. Haiti has also halved the number of underweight children under the age of five some three years ahead of the 2015 deadline.

As Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrapped up a visit to the Caribbean nation earlier this week, poverty reduction was a central theme in his discussions with UN officials and Haitian authorities. It is also a priority for the Government. Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe recently remarked, “Our initiatives will be increasingly strengthened and we invite civil society to join us in the fight against poverty and to improve Haitians’ living conditions.”

Since the quake, which killed at least 200,000 people, UNDP reports that 97 per cent of the debris has been removed from the streets; 11,000 displaced families have been relocated and 50 camps housing the displaced have been closed; and more than 4,000 metres of river bank protection structures have been constructed to guard against flooding.

Haitian and international efforts have succeeded in significantly reducing the toll from the cholera epidemic, reflected in a 74 per cent decrease in the number of new cases so far this year, while Haitian communities are rebuilding, recovering and becoming more resilient to future catastrophes four years after the devastating 2010 earthquake....

At the clinic in Haiti, shot by Alex Proimos, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

After 8,000 cholera deaths, Haiti faces new epidemic

Terra Daily via AFP: Hard-hit by a cholera epidemic that started in 2010, Haiti now faces a new threat in the expanding chikungunya virus, authorities said Wednesday. "We have had 8,561 deaths from cholera since its reappearance in Haiti in 2010, while 702,892 cases have been confirmed," said Health Minister Florence Duperval.

Now, the chikungunya virus that has been spreading in the Caribbean has emerged as another crisis in the poorest country in the Americas. Transmitted by mosquitoes, the virus causes high fever and severe joint pain, disproportionately striking poorer neighborhoods where homes often have no windows or screens.

"We are putting in place steps to fight the chikungunya outbreak which is being felt almost nationwide," Duperval added. The measures include fumigation and medications, she said.

There had been no cholera in Haiti for at least 150 years until it was allegedly introduced to the Caribbean nation by Nepalese UN peacekeepers sent there in the wake of the disastrous earthquake in January 2010....

Mosquito larvae in stagnant water, shot by Sreejithk2000, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license 

As dry season ends in Haiti, significant gains seen in fight against cholera, UN official says

UN News Centre: Significant gains in the fight against the cholera epidemic in Haiti have been recorded as the dry season ends and the United Nations continues to support the Government's comprehensive strategy of monitoring, rapid response and planning for long-term solutions, a top UN official in the impoverished country says.

“Since the beginning of the dry season, we have seen registered the lowest number of cases and deaths since the start of the epidemic, with a reduction of 75 per cent of cases in the first trimester of this year against the same period last year,” Peter de Clercq, the Deputy Special Representative for the Secretary-General in Haiti, told the UN News Centre.

“That is very good news and reflects our efforts so far are working,” he said. “Of course, every case of cholera is one too many. Every person that dies of cholera is one too many and is unacceptable and will cause us to work even harder to combat the disease,” he added.

Because the disease retracts to limited locations during the dry season, according to the UN Country Team, it presents a window of opportunity for the UN and its partners to target the highest risk areas with surveillance, analysis and rapid response for treatment and sanitation actions; work that continues throughout the year across wider sites of conc
ern.

“Interventions are based on identifying where cholera occurs; then very rapid intervention teams go in and deploy a number of different measures including identifying, isolating and a whole range of water and sanitation-related activities that improve the environment and reduce the risk of the disease spreading,” Mr. de Clercq said....

The UN Mission in Haiti’s Community Violence Reduction section (CVR) continued its joint pilot project with the Direction Nationale de l’Eau Potable et de l’Assainissement (DINEPA) to install water filter systems and provide hygiene training in Cité Soleil, Port au Prince. Photo: Logan Abassi/MINUSTAH

Drought threatens population in the northwest of Haiti

Amelie Baron at the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Only cactus grows along the dirt road fringing arid fields on the way to the isolated village of Bas des Moustiques, on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Port-de-Paix in Haiti. A lack of rain in recent months has killed crops in Haiti's poorest region, and left people struggling to survive.

...The drought follows two years of poor harvests in the region. ... Historically, food has been sparse in northwestern Haiti, where chronic malnutrition is common among the young, stunting their physical and intellectual growth.

Now the drought is directly affecting an additional 143,000 people, say international relief experts, prompting a major emergency operation by the U.N.'s World Food Program.

"They are now in a terrible situation," said Georg-Friedrich Heymell, the Program's director in Haiti. "They cannot survive without support. The food we give them will help them for the next six weeks."...

Senior UN official urges donor community to ramp up efforts to tackle cholera in Haiti

UN News Centre: The United Nations official tasked with coordinating the response to the cholera epidemic in Haiti says the country is not receiving the international attention it deserves, and is calling on the donor community to scale up support to combat the disease.

“Haiti is not receiving the attention of the international community, particularly the donor community,” Pedro Medrano told the UN News Centre, as he reported on a recent trip during which he met with officials in Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.

“It is clear that this epidemic is not on their radar screen,” added Mr. Medrano, who is the Secretary-General’s Senior Coordinator for the Cholera Response in Haiti. Even if we are making progress, and we have a lower number of cases today, we are not out of the woods.

The cholera outbreak which has affected Haiti since October 2010 is still considered the largest in the Western Hemisphere, with more than 700,000 cases and over 8,500 deaths.

Mr. Medrano travelled to the donor countries to try and raise their understanding of what the UN is attempting to do to eliminate cholera in Haiti. “I think that it is clear that any country with the number of people suffering last year – 65,000 new cases, and we have more than 700,000 cases in total – would consider this an emergency,” he added...

A Haitian family waits outside University Hospital after being treated (unclear for what), Jan. 20, 2010, in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. US Department of Defense photo

In Haiti, planting trees is no simple matter

IPS News in Doucet, Haiti: Reforestation and soil conservation programmes costing many thousands of dollars in this rural community have resulted in hundreds of small ledges built of straw or sacks of earth. In certain areas, the earthworks seem to be lasting, but in others, they are disintegrating.

The construction and destruction of the anti-erosion ledges – all made with foreign development and humanitarian money – offer an example of how at least some of Haiti’s reforestation projects turn out. No matter what promises were made, a farmer will always be concerned with the immediate need of feeding and clothing his or her family first.

In the years since the 2010 earthquake, the 11th and 12th communal sections of Petit-Goâve, located 60 kilometres southwest of the capital, have hosted several soil conservation and agricultural programmes with budgets in the tens and even hundreds of thousands. The U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), Helvetas and Action Agro Allemande (AAA), sometimes working with a local development organisation – Mouvman Kole Zepòl (MKOZE) – oversaw projects aimed at rehabilitating the watershed of the Ladigue River.

The steep slopes around the river “are very vulnerable to water erosion and mudslides,” MKOZE explained in a report on one project that had a budget of 91,534 dollars. “During rainy season, the waters from the Ladigue River dump a lot of sediment and rocks at the river’s mouth, destroying fields and causing homes to flood. Sometimes harvests, homes, animals and even human lives are lost.”

In the Petit-Goâve region, deforestation started about a half-century ago, according to many residents. It began with the devastating 1963 Hurricane Flora, which caused great damage and over 5,000 deaths in Haiti’s western and southern regions.

...Haiti has less than three percent tree cover, down from about 60 percent a century ago, and perhaps 80 percent when Christopher Columbus first disembarked. In Haiti, trees are cut down primarily for fuel....

A view above Milot in Haiti, shot by Carol4929, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license 

Haitian farmers call for 'food sovereignty'

Seed Daily via AFP: Hundreds of small farmers have converged on the central Haitian city of Hinche to demand more space to grow their own crops in a country that imports more than half of its food.

"Yes to land reform. Yes to environmentally-friendly agriculture," chanted the 300-some farmers gathered for the 40th anniversary of the Papaye Peasant Movement, a group aiming to promote "food sovereignty for the people. Forty years of struggle for social change. We want true land reform."

The high point of the summit is a march expected to see 40,000 farmers protest to air their grievances Friday. MPP leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste strongly opposed the introduction of hybrid and genetically modified seeds from American giant Monsanto after the devastating 2010 earthquake that leveled much of Haiti.

"Farmers need to get the same consideration as all other Haitians. They must be respected and included in national decisions," he said. "We have to show that we are a force in Haiti."…

A cabbage field in Haiti, USAID photo

Haiti launches microfinance catastrophe insurance program

Susana Ferreira in Reuters: When Hurricane Sandy struck Haiti late last year, the home Guerda Pierre shares with her three children and mother in Cabaret, north of Port-au-Prince, was flooded — and so was the merchandise she sold to make a living.

"The books, the food, everything was wet after Sandy," said Pierre. The plantain plants and beans in her garden were also destroyed. But unlike the majority of Haitians, Pierre had an insurance policy.

As a borrowing client at Fonkoze, a Haitian microcredit organization, she was automatically covered under its natural disaster insurance policy. Through MiCRO (Microinsurance Catastrophe Risk Organization), she had her existing debt wiped clean, a new credit account with Fonkoze instated for the same amount. And she received a payout of about $60 to help her get back on her feet quickly.

On Tuesday, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a division of the World Bank, announced $1.7 million in funding, plus technical assistance, to support the program.

MiCRO, the first natural catastrophe insurance scheme of its kind in Haiti, was founded by Fonkoze, the international relief organization Mercy Corps and a number of other partners after a devastating earthquake in Haiti in January 2010. The program was rolled out officially in January 2011, and all of Fonkoze's microloan clients across the country were automatically insured — well in time for the hurricane season...

US Marine photo of aid to Port-au-Prince after 2010's Hurricane Tomas

Haiti farmers in dire straits after Hurricane Sandy

Seed Daily via AFP: At an isolated farm in the town of Papaye in central Haiti, a group of farmers are counting the costs of Hurricane Sandy and trying to decide their next steps. The news from the meeting is grim.

Flooding unleashed by the massive storm killed more than 50 people and left thousands homeless in Haiti, another woe for an impoverished country still struggling to recover from a 2010 earthquake that left more than 200,000 dead.

Sandy also devastated the Caribbean nation's farming sector -- already reeling from a dry spell. "Haitian farmers were very affected by the drought, and then by the flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy," said Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the head of the Mouvement des Paysans de Papaye, an influential peasant movement. "Harvests were lost in most parts of the country. And now, there is a real risk of famine."...

Victims of Hurricane Sandy forgotten in Haiti

Terra Daily via AFP: Hurricane Sandy, the deadly storm that slammed into New York and New Jersey in October, tore through the Caribbean long before reaching America. In Haiti, many still await help.

Flooding from Sandy killed 54 people and left thousands homeless in Haiti, another woe for a country still struggling to recover from a 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people, and a cholera epidemic that broke out months later and has killed more than 7,000 people.

Nearly one month after the government of President Michel Martelly declared a national emergency, scores of residents in the hard-hit town of Petit-Goave, in south-western Haiti, still live in emergency shelters.

In the Nan banann (Among the Bananas) neighborhood located between the Caiman river and the sea, residents mourn their dead outside homes still buried under layers of mud and banana trees swept in by flood waters.

"It's the Caiman river that is the cause of our misfortunes," said Elnee Prophete, one of the storm victims. "When it overflows, it sweeps away everything in its path," Prophete said, pointing to what remains of her house, buried to the roof in a reddish mud...

Hurricane Sandy on October 22, 2012, from NASA

Floods claim as many as 16 lives in Haitian city

Terra Daily via AFP: Flood waters inundated impoverished areas of Cap Haitien, Haiti's second largest city, killing as many as 16 people, including three children, city officials said Friday. "The city has been struck by disaster. There are many dead and major damage. All the populous areas are flooded," Cap Haitien Mayor Wilborde Beon told AFP by telephone.

Beon said many people had to be rescued and given shelter from the high waters, which swept through the northern city Thursday night amid heavy rains in the region. "The entrance to the city is completely flooded, all the rivers and ravines are swollen," he said, appealing for aid and support.

Preliminary estimates put the number of dead at 16, most of them when their homes collapsed in the flooding and heavy rains, the city's police chief, Kenel Pierre, told AFP. "Haitian police patrols found a number of bodies in the streets. We have seen the bodies of three children aged two or three," Pierre said...

The cross on Morne Jean, above Cap-Haitien. Shot by Rémi Kaupp, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

UN and Haitian authorities seek $74 million to help farm sector recover from Hurricane Sandy

UN News Centre: The United Nations food relief agency and the Haitian Government are seeking to raise $74 million over the next 12 months to help the country’s agricultural sector recover from the impact of Hurricane Sandy, which hit the Caribbean nation two weeks ago.

“The recent natural disasters in Haiti require the robust response of the international community to support ongoing Government efforts,” the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Senior Emergency Coordinator in Haiti, Adam Yao, said in a news release.

According to FAO, the so-called “super-storm” caused significant damage to Haiti’s crops, land, livestock, fisheries and rural infrastructures, leaving more than 600,000 Haitians at risk of food and nutrition insecurity. It also killed 60 people and flooded, destroyed or damaged some 18,000 homes, as well as hospitals, schools and public buildings.

Hurricane Sandy was the third disaster to hit Haiti in the space of a few months. Between May and June, a severe drought struck at the beginning of the critical spring cropping season, and in August, Tropical Storm Isaac battered the country, displacing thousands of people.

The combined impact of the three disasters on the agricultural sector has been estimated by the Government at $254 million, affecting the livelihoods of 1.5 million people, FAO noted in the news release. Of the total funding sought, it added, $4 million is needed to provide immediate assistance to 20,000 families so they can make it through the winter cropping season starting in December....

Hurricane Sandy on October 23, via NASA

Improving healthcare response in Haiti

Space Daily: Earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes have taken their toll on many parts of the world. Communities struggle for years to rebuild without immediate access to basic necessities like proper healthcare. Satellites are helping to make this transition easier. A new system designed by The Institute for Space Medicine (MEDES) in France and Local Insight Global Impact (LIGI) in Portugal, and supported by ESA through its integrated Applications programme, provides access to healthcare using satellite telephones and satellite navigation.

It is designed for regions where trained medical professionals are sparse and where communications are limited due to the damage caused by a natural disaster. Telephone cables can be blown down, rendering phone networks useless. The system has been used with success in Haiti, where the massive earthquake of 2010 has left its mark.

Health units in many Haitian regions are few and far between and if someone decides to make the journey to a unit, there is a very good chance no one will be there to provide care. This system makes up for the lack of local health care by ensuring anyone from anywhere can be trained to report the symptoms of a patient accurately.

It uses a special interface designed for satellite and smartphones that walks a user through a series of steps to send data as SMS messages via satellite or a ground-based system, if available. This information is then accessed by local and national health systems via an Internet portal....

Aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, shot by UN Photo/Logan Abassi United Nations Development Programme, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Tropical Storm Isaac drenches Haiti, aims for Cuba

Susana Ferreira in Reuters: Tropical Storm Isaac emerged over warm Caribbean waters on Saturday slightly weaker but ready to regroup after dumping torrential rains on Haiti, where thousands of people remain homeless more than two years after a devastating earthquake.

Heavy rains and high winds lashed Haiti's southern coast, flooding parts of the capital Port-au-Prince, and flattening tents in some of the fragile resettlement camps that house more than 350,000 survivors of the 2010 earthquake.

A 10-year-old girl was killed in Port-au-Prince when a wall fell on her, the Civil Protection authority said. Power outages and flooding were reported as Isaac moved across the hilly and severely deforested Caribbean country.

"There's a lot of rain, a lot of wind," said Magdala Jean-Baptiste, who huddled with her frightened children in their home in the southern coastal city of Jacmel. "We haven't had any power since the storm started yesterday. We passed the night with no sleep."

Isaac was forecast to sweep over eastern Cuba on Saturday and strengthen into a hurricane as it approaches the Florida Keys. It was on track for the Gulf of Mexico, where major energy companies have begun offshore evacuations that could end up shutting nearly half the area's oil output...

Tropical Storm Isaac on August 23, 2012

At least six dead in rain-ravaged Haiti

Terra Daily via AFP: At least six people, including a child, were killed in Haiti when their homes collapsed during heavy rains that have ravaged Haiti for several days, the Civil Protection Office said Friday.

The victims were members of two families living in a neighborhood erected on a hill in the Petionville suburb of the capital.

Nadia Lochard of Haiti's Civil Protection Office said that three women, two men and a girl died "when their homes collapsed as they were carried away in a mudslide." "It was difficult to find their bodies buried under much mud," she told AFP.

Three more bodies were also found in another neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, but the authorities could not confirm whether they had been killed by the rains....

Rains, mudslides kill 10 in cholera-stricken Haiti

Joseph Guyler Delva in Reuters: A storm unleashed torrential rains, mudslides and flooding in Haiti, killing at least 10 people, Haitian officials said on Tuesday after thunderstorms pounded several Caribbean countries. The heavy rainfall across the region, which began over the weekend, comes after the June 1 start of the Atlantic hurricane season and as Haiti and the Dominican Republic grapple with cholera outbreaks that could be worsened by flood waters.

In the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, flooding swept through crowded slums and tent camps housing hundreds of thousands of people still homeless from Haiti's devastating earthquake last year. Haiti's civil protection director, Alta Jean-Baptiste, said many of the dead lived in low-lying areas and failed to heed government warnings to evacuate. "They are people who decided to build in river beds and other areas of risk," she said.

A large low-pressure system over the northwestern Caribbean Sea had a 20 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression in the next day or two, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Heavy rains threaten to cause flash floods over portions of Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and eastern Cuba as the system moves slowly toward the northwest or north over the next couple of days, the center said…

Climate change just one worry in struggling Haiti

Robert Shaw in AlertNet: A month before a massive earthquake derailed pretty much everything in Haiti, the government set up a climate change division within its environment ministry, building on a “National Adaptation Plan of Action” (NAPA) the government announced in 2006. But in the aftermath of the devastation, climate change has been all but forgotten in Haiti as the country struggles to deal with pressing rebuilding priorities.

“We have seen very little concrete action in terms of climate change,” admits Jean Pierre Moise, Haiti’s climate chief. Still, promises by rich nations to provide $100 billion a year in funding by 2020 to help vulnerable countries deal with climate change may present opportunities for Haiti to address its problems and vulnerabilities, particularly if it can overcome longstanding political paralysis, experts say.

“Over the last number of years it is true that there has been a void of leadership in Haiti, and with no budget, no authority and no capacity, very little can be achieved,” said Ross Gartley, a disaster risk specialist at the World Bank. But Haiti now has a “unique opportunity to position itself to get big financing further down the line … and to build solid capacity,” he said.

Many Haitians live in urban areas that are vulnerable to landslides and floods, a point not lost on the Ministry of the Environment. About a year before the devastating January 2010 earthquake, which claimed more than 50,000 lives, the ministry appointed 26 Haitian artists, actors, comedians and journalists as environment and disaster risk reduction ambassadors.

Haitian mayors are also beginning to understand the need to act on climate concerns, international experts say. "We have already begun work with the mayor of Port-au-Prince, Muscadin Jean-Yves Jason, to bring together local leaders from around the country and the world in raising political commitment to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation,” said Ricardo Mena, head of the Americas office of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction…

An aerial view of the UN headquarters in Haiti shows the devastation caused by an earthquake measuring 7 plus on the Richter scale rocked Port au Prince Haiti just before 5 pm, January 12, 2010. Shot by UN Photo/Logan Abassi UNDP Global, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Climate change could to flood 13% of Dominican, Haitian coasts

Domincan Today: The impact of climatic change threatens “in a relatively brief period” the onset of flooding in 13% of the territory along the coasts in the island of Hispaniola, shared by Dominican Republic and Haiti, because of a rising sea level, with a devastating effect for the economy if corrective measures aren’t taken in time to mitigate the effects of global warming.

The gloomy forecast was delivered by vice president Rafael Alburquerque yesterday to delegates from 179 countries in the 16th Summit on Climatic Change. Alburquerque, who heads the Dominican delegation in the world conclave, said the country will have to spend more than US$8.5 billion to adequately deal with the impact of global warming in the areas of tourism, water and energy.

He warned that the effects of climatic change have been clearly felt in the island for a long time, and as an example cited the constant swelling of the lakes Enriquillo and Azuei, whose floods have left hundreds of thousands of acres of agro and pasture lands under water and forced hundreds of poor farming families from their homes….

Map of San Domingo in the island of Hispaniola, from a plate by Montanus, in 1671

Cholera could kill 10,000 in Haiti in the next year

Terra Daily via AFP: The cholera epidemic in Haiti could kill 10,000 people and cause 200,000 infections in the coming year, a doctor with the Pan-American Health Organization said on Wednesday. "Our projections show that we could have around 200,000 cases of infection in Haiti over the next six to twelve months," PAHO regional advisor Ciro Ugarte told AFP.

"If the fatality rate (of four to five percent) is maintained... we may have 10.000 dead," said Ugarte, describing this as "the worst case scenario." "The cholera epidemic cannot be stopped, especially in places where there is a lack of safe water supply, basic sanitation," he said. "The cholera could spread beyond Haiti, in the Dominican Republic and beyond."

More than 1,100 Haitians have died since cholera was first detected in the nation in mid-October. The number of people treated in hospitals and clinics has soared to 18,382. The PAHO, a regional office of the UN's World Health Organization, has warned that cholera has taken hold and the troubled Caribbean nation should now expect hundreds of thousands of case over the next few years….

Solid waste has been bought by the inhabitants of Petite Anse (Cap-Haitien, Haiti) to create a road and "soil", after it has decomposed. Shot by Rémi Kaupp, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Haiti sees spike in cholera deaths

Al-Jazeera.net: The death toll from Haiti's cholera outbreak has soared to 917 as officials struggled to contain the growing epidemic threatening the quake-ravaged country. The previous official toll announced two days earlier was 796. Authorities on Sunday said 14,642 people had been treated in hospitals since the disease took hold in the desperately poor Caribbean nation.

Officials fear the scale of the epidemic could increase exponentially if cholera infiltrates makeshift camps in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, where hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors live in cramped and unsanitary conditions.

A January earthquake flattened much of the capital, leaving more than 250,000 people dead and an estimated 1.3 million of Haiti's 10 million population displaced. International organisations have stepped up appeals for funds to bring in more doctors, medicine and water purification equipment. The United Nations is asking for $164m to fight the epidemic, which has gained strength over the past week….