Haiti cholera response, funding called ‘inadequate’

PORT-AU-PRINCE – The United Nations-led international response to Haiti’s deadly cholera epidemic is "inadequate" and woefully short of funding, aid groups including the U.N.’s humanitarian agency said Friday.

As the death toll from the epidemic, which is killing dozens of people each day, climbed above 1,180, the huge humanitarian operation in Haiti appeared to be losing the battle against the latest catastrophe to beset the poor Caribbean nation after a devastating earthquake in January.

The spreading epidemic has piled misery on Haiti’s already impoverished and traumatized population as the government prepares to hold national elections on Nov. 28 in an atmosphere of turmoil, including anti-U.N. riots and protests this week.

The government has made no move to postpone the polls, which will elect a new president, deputies and senators.

"Despite the huge presence of international organizations in Haiti, the cholera response has to date been inadequate in meeting the needs of the population," Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said in a statement.

"There is no time left for meetings and debate – the time for action is now," MSF head of mission in Haiti Stefano Zannini said, calling on all groups and agencies to urgently ramp up their activities to fight the cholera outbreak.

In over a month, the cholera epidemic has spread to eight of the country’s 10 provinces and some 20,000 people have been treated in hospitals for the diarrheal disease, which can kill in hours through dehydration if not treated quickly.

Conversely, if people are treated early they can be easily saved, experts say, adding that speed of response is crucial.

The anti-cholera campaign has been complicated by reports — so far rebuffed as inconclusive by the U.N. mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) — that U.N. Nepalese peacekeepers brought the disease to Haiti, where it had been absent for 100 years.

Popular fear and anger over the epidemic has turned into violent attacks and protests against the same blue-helmeted peacekeepers who are in the country to help Haitians.

At least two people were killed and dozens injured in clashes this week between U.N. troops and rioting cholera protesters, some armed, in the northern city of Cap-Haitien.

The violence, which the United Nations blamed on political agitators, disrupted supplies and treatment in a part of the country which is experiencing a sharp spike in the cholera epidemic.

Imogen Wall, spokeswoman for the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA, said the cholera response operation so far had received only a small fraction — $5 million — of the $164 million the United Nations had appealed for a week ago to fight the epidemic.

"The response is completely inadequate and in this situation where we are against the clock we urgently need support if we are going to save lives," she told Reuters.

"RACE AGAINST TIME"

"We don’t have what we need to do it … Cholera is a race against time. If we can get to people, and if we have what we need, we should be saving lives," Wall said.

Aid workers have reported patients dying in the streets and on roadsides, or in isolated rural communities, because they were unable to get to hospitals in time to be saved.

MSF criticized what it called "critical shortfalls" in the cholera response, calling for an acceleration of prevention measures like setting up treatment centers and oral rehydration points near communities, providing safe, chlorinated water, building latrines and safely disposing of waste and bodies.

Wall said 30 cholera treatment centers had been set up, and more were planned, along with oral rehydration stations.

The international relief operation in Haiti, one of the biggest running in the world, has already been criticized for slow progress in helping Haiti recover from the Jan. 12 quake, which killed more than 250,000 people and wrecked the capital.

Wall said the humanitarian operation was already caring for 1.3 million homeless earthquake survivors sheltering in fragile tent and tarpaulin camps in Port-au-Prince, where they were receiving food, water and medical assistance.

"Basically, we are running two emergencies … we cannot neglect earthquake survivors because we have cholera," she said, explaining the urgent need for additional funding.

She said the cholera, which scientists say is a strain previously found in South Asia and elsewhere, was ripping though Haiti so quickly because the impoverished population of nearly 10 million was vulnerable, lacked immunity and was ignorant of how to treat the disease.

Scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Pan American Health Organization said Thursday the epidemic was part of a 49-year-old global pandemic and could worsen despite efforts to control it.

Haiti’s neighbor the Dominican Republic is on alert after reporting several cholera cases there, and health officials in Florida have reported one confirmed case — a resident who had visited family in Haiti. But U.S. officials say good sanitary conditions mean the risk of a U.S. outbreak is minimal.