Haiti’s Cholera Started Ten Years Ago Today--October 2020

 

Semi-Conscious Haitian Cholera Patient–June 27, 2011 (Photo by John Carroll) 

Ten years ago today people in central Haiti started dying for unknown reasons. They had profuse vomiting and diarrhea and often died in shock before they could reach a health center.

Two days later, on October 21, 2010, this “new disease” was identified by the Haiti National Public Health Laboratory as cholera caused by the bacterial pathogen Vibrio cholera. Over the next 10 years, Haiti would have the largest outbreak of cholera in the world–sickening at least 800,000 people and killing 10,000.

Genomic investigations were done of the Haitian cholera bacteria and it showed that UN soldiers in a certain camp in Haiti were responsible for introducing the cholera bacteria to Haiti through a faulty sanitation system that emptied sewage into Haiti’s largest river.

During the past decade, I had the privilege of caring for Haitians in Cholera Treatment Centers all over Haiti. During those years, I witnessed how a deficient sanitation system combined with underfunded public health and mind-numbing poverty could be so deadly.

Cholera (like AIDS and Covid-19) quickly became a politicized disease and governments pulled in wrong directions to the detriment of Haitian victims and their families.

The Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School had a Zoom webinar recently with multiple experts discussing the “decade of cholera” in Haiti. At the beginning of the meeting, Dr. Louise Ivers requested a few moments of silence in memory of the Haitian victims of cholera. And during that silence, pictures of Haitians were shown with brief quotes regarding how cholera affected them—

“I had three children, but my 10-month old baby died of cholera in 2010… haven’t been right in my mind since then. My thoughts are consumed by the memory of my baby.”

–Renette Viergelan

“Cholera struck me as well, and the fight was terrible. I am a strong man in body and spirit, but after a day in this condition, I lost control of my body.”

–Cadet Gary

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org