Global & Disaster Medicine

Victims of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti, which killed at least 10,000 people and infected hundreds of thousands more, are petitioning the US supreme court on Tuesday to hold the UN accountable for having brought the disease to the stricken country.

The Guardian

“……The UN has admitted that cholera was introduced to Haiti by peacekeepers in 2010 after about 1,000 troops were redeployed from Nepal to help in emergency work following a devastating earthquake. Basic health measures that could have been taken to prevent the transfer of the disease at the cost to the UN of only $2,000 were not taken, and instead raw sewage from the peacekeepers’ camps was dumped directly into rivers from which thousands of Haitians routinely drew water for cooking and drinking.

A leaked report carried out by the UN itself a month after the initial outbreak of cholera found serious sanitation flaws in the Haiti peacekeeping mission. Yet for six years the world body continued to deny it had anything to do with the health catastrophe……”

computer generated depiction of a cholera organism


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