Haiti What Will be the Next Disaster?

The small Caribbean country of Haiti has had more than its share of disasters in the past year, meaning that it is now in need of a great deal of help. Even before the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck this country in January of 2010, Haiti had suffered considerable economic difficulty. This has only compounded the problems its government has experienced in responding quickly and effectively to recent adversities.

The earthquake that struck on January 12, 2010, hit the region near Port-au-Prince, the country’s capital. About 3,000,000 people were affected by the quake in one way or another, with an estimated 230,000 dead, 300,000 injured, and at least 1,000,000 left homeless. And with the quake occurring so near the capital, much of the government’s own infrastructure was destroyed or damaged, which further hindered both a swift response and the actual governing of the country.

Almost a year later, the vast majority of displaced Haitians are still living in tents, usually in makeshift camps. If the internationally promised aid has come at all, it hasn’t resulted in much rebuilding. Even six months after the earthquake, almost all the rubble remained, and many roads were still impassable. Violence is rampant through the camps – sexual, domestic, and gang-related – and reconstruction of the institutions of society has been extremely slow. Most of the bits of work that many people had been able to find, before the earthquake, vanished afterwards when small businesses and other enterprises were lost or had to close.

More recently, Haiti came close to another disaster, though this one ended up being more of a near miss. Hurricane Tomas was due to hit the country in the first week of November, necessitating a huge relocation of people from the refugee camps. Many of them refused to leave, however, despite their vulnerability to the storm. They were afraid they would lose what few possessions they still had, or that the camps would be torn down and they would not be allowed to return.

But Tomas, as it happened, did not hit Haiti as directly as people had feared. There was still much flooding, and a few people died, but the country did not experience nearly the devastation that it might have. So Tomas was not as much of a setback as it could have been for Haiti’s recovery, even if it did do some damage.

But even before the hurricane appeared on the scene, another major crisis was brewing, one that rescue and aid workers had worried about for months. It’s not uncommon for cholera to follow natural disasters like earthquakes or hurricanes, when people are left without sanitation and end up drinking contaminated water. And sure enough, an outbreak of cholera began in late October in a rural area, but it has since spread to at least seven of Haiti’s ten administrative districts, as well as crossing the border into the Dominican Republic.

Some scientists are still trying to locate the origin of the outbreak, which Haiti has never experienced before. But the search for origins is quickly being overshadowed by the need simply to treat as many people as possible, to try to stem the tide of the epidemic. Due to the cholera outbreak, the European Union has begun to stress that when anyone donates aid for Haiti, the primary need now is for medical supplies rather than money. Stopping the spread of the disease is taking priority even over the rebuilding. And meanwhile, much of the aid is not getting through, as people in Haiti have begun to riot, blaming the cholera on certain UN aid workers who came from a country that was experiencing its own cholera epidemic.

With each new disaster, people ask what can possibly happen next, to this country that started with so little and now has even less. The problem is that this question keeps being answered, by another catastrophe that sends Haiti reeling again.