Cholera rages in Haiti, homeless displaced — new president chooses repression

The desperate situation of the Haitian people has given rise to political tensions in the country’s Parliament and anger among the people against the U.S.-backed regime. The only effective aid for combating the cholera epidemic has come from socialist Cuba.

Parliament rejected Haitian President Michel Martelly’s first choice for prime minister. He then picked Bernard Gousse, who was dismissed as justice minister seven years ago under U.S. pressure because he was “so repressive, uncontrollable and ineffective,” according to WikiLeaks revelations as reported in Haïti-Liberté. (July 28-Aug. 2) Gousse also faces significant opposition in Parliament.

On July 25, in an incident still being investigated, Member of Parliament Dionald Polyte was shot and killed by one of his bodyguards. On the same day, MP Romain Masset was greeted with rocks and bottles when he tried to visit his hometown. His mother’s house was burned down, and Masset escaped with minor damages.

On July 24 Martelly was greeted with rocks and bottles when he visited a suburb of Cap-Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city. The cops arrested about 30 people.

With the coming of the rainy season, cholera has struck widely in Haiti, especially in the north. Thousands of people are falling sick, many of them dying. In Port de Paix, the hospitals are so full they have had to turn away desperately sick people. (HLLN news feed, July 29)

The Lancet medical journal says that the extent of the cholera epidemic has been undercounted. (March 16)

In a country with adequate sanitation, clean water, available rehydration supplies and ample antibiotics, cholera would not pose a serious threat. However, there are no public sanitation facilities in all of Haiti — just open channels. Less than half the people had access to potable water before the quake. After the quake, the supply for the 630,000 people living in displaced persons camps is haphazard.

Cuba leads the way in cholera epidemic

Both the United States and Cuba have responded to the cholera epidemic. The differences are readily apparent.

A State Department fact sheet issued in January says that the U.S. has supplied $41 million to the Haitian government’s efforts and helped set up a coordinating center in Port au Prince. As normal for projects run through the U.S. Agency for International Development, however, most of that $41 million was spent in the U.S. for supplies delivered.

Cuba, which has had a significant medical presence in Haiti for 12 years, reinforced its aid after the earthquake and increased it again after the cholera epidemic began last year. About 1,300 Cuban medical personnel are now in Haiti.

Health authorities from Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic exchanged experiences at a conference in Santo Domingo in late April. UNICEF and the Pan American Health Organization praised the approach of the Cuban medical brigade in Haiti. They said that Cuba had taken a “major step” forward in infectious disease treatment.

Lorenso Sommariba, head of Cuba’s Medical Brigade, said the Cuban teams had engaged in “active research.” They visited 292,875 houses, contacted 1.4 million people, brought 5,342 patients to assistance centers and instructed more than 3 million Haitians on the prevention and treatment of cholera. (Cuba International, no. 379)

Housing is in crisis

While cholera is killing a thousand people a month, all levels of the Haitian government are trying to force people out of the camps with ripped tents and jerry-rigged huts that still shelter more than 600,000 people who were made homeless in the aftermath of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake.

At its height, more than 1 million people were in these camps, which are scattered all over Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas devastated by the earthquake. Some who had lived in the camps left to get shelter with family members in rural Haiti, where it is hard to earn a living. Others moved back to their old neighborhoods to live in tottering buildings that haven’t yet collapsed.

The government uses the force of bulldozers, front-loaders and police to scrape away the tents and huts. Bri Kouri Nouvèl Gaye reports that the cops attacked Camp Django in Delmas, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, and beat up protesters. About 250 families lived in the camp. They were offered 5,000 gourdes ($125) to leave, but got no other help, no leads on new housing or schools for their children. (www.defend.ht)