Global Pulse Blog » Natural Disaters

Concerns about Cholera in Pakistan

Jennifer Weinberg — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:57:55 +0000

With heavy flooding covering much of the country and leaving millions of people homeless in Pakistan, concerns over the potential for a major outbreak of cholera are growing. With continuing rains throughout the region, Dr. Michael Merson, the founding director of the Duke Global Health Institute believes that ”Basically there is no question” there’s a major risk of an outbreak. With a lack of adequate aid to the area to ensure a consistent, clean water supply, the risk of this diarrheal illness is immense. While the flood has already killed over 1,500 people thus far, even more are at risk from a potential cholera outbreak with 3.5 million people in Pakistan lacking access to clean water. In the past year, cholera epidemics in Zimbabwe killed over 4,000 people with over 350 killed by the disease in Nigeria over the last three months, demonstrating the deadliness of this disease. Without adequate rehydration therapy, victims can die within a day or two from overwhelming dehydration secondary to extreme diarrhea with up to a liter of stool output every hour. But with adequate rehydration therapy to replace fluids and restore electrolytes, death rates can be lowered to less than one percent.

Addressing poverty in Haiti with business solutions

Jennifer Weinberg — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:29:19 +0000

A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor by the SEVEN Fund’s Michael Fairbanks explores a potential approach to addressing Haiti’s need for long-term economic support. While several different groups have contributed to relief efforts after the devastating January 12th earthquake, many are looking to develop a more long-term solution. A challenge to building private-sector support is the atmosphere in a country where the elite and wealthy have often supported business initiatives which favor big business and are not developed to lend support to those most in need.

In order to create prosperity for the average Haitian citizen, innovative solutions are needed to develop “attractive export market segments to serve with unique products, building new distribution systems, lowering energy costs, and providing skills to Haitian citizens who will be compensated for the high value they create” according to Pierre Marie Boisson, a Harvard-educated, Haitian international banker.

Haiti Four Months Later…

Wilnise Jasmin — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:48:27 +0000

Four months after the earthquake in Haiti, it is being argued that the poor are receiving better healthcare than before the quake due to the influx of medical volunteers and donated medicines, working under the supervision of the Ministry of Public health and Population. In an effort to address the question of what will happen after the foreign medical aid leaves, the Post- Disaster Needs Assessment estimates that the earthquake resulted in US $169 million in damages to health infrastructure alone and in addition to that, their three-year plan to improve the country’s health profile beyond pre-January 12th levels will cost US $546 million. Currently, “Outside medical organizations are now the backbone of Haitian medical care,” says Dana Van Alphen, regional adviser for disaster management at the Pan American Health Organization who has been involved in discussions with a Haitian presidential health commission. In an effort to make these improvements in access to healthcare permanent, the PDNA identified primary health (along with adequate follow-up) and the establishment mobile clinics and health centers as a means to provide universal access, quality services and essential medications. This would allow care to be available nationwide instead of concentrated in Port-au- Prince.

The PDNA also recommends a massive investment in training for Haitian medical professionals because it is believed that now that the need for urgent care has subsided and the consequences of the earthquake are no ;longer front page news, the influx of foreign health professionals is fading. This transition would include pairing Haitian medical personnel with foreign staff for training and transferring functional control of hospitals and clinics to locals.

To begin the process proposed by the PDNA, a company called Containers to Clinics will transport a ready-made clinic, which will be transported in two pieces to the grounds of Graces Children’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince . The clinic is set to leave Boston around May 15 in a truck, which will haul it to Brooklyn, New York, where it will be loaded on a freight ship and be set up by June.

Please follow this link to read an executive summary of the PDNA.

Crisis in Haiti

Wilnise Jasmin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:53:05 +0000

Note: The GP editorial staff’s thoughts and hearts go out in solidarity to the residents of Port-au-Prince and their families, as well as our colleagues in Haiti. We will be updating this post as more information becomes available.

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Earthquake Crisis in Haiti

Original post by Wilnise Jasmin [01.14.2010 @ 6:53 AM EST]

As you may have already heard, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck about 10 miles southwest of Port-au- Prince, Haiti at about 5 pm Tuesday night. The quake ravaged the infrastructure of Haiti’s fragile government and destroyed some of its most important cultural symbols.

“Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.” He added: “All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe.”

President Obama promised that Haiti would have the “unwavering support” of the United States.

Haitian authorities and humanitarian aid organizations are struggling to respond amid devastation.

A Red Cross field team of officials from several nations had to spend Wednesday night in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to gather its staff before taking the six-hour drive in the morning across the border to the earthquake zone.

Here are some various ways to help with the recovery:

American Red Cross
Center for International Disaster Information
On this website, there have been posts containing information about missing relatives. If anyone can possibly account for anyone please do.
Partners In Health, and their partner organization in Haiti, Zanmi Lasante, are familiar to many of us from Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains. They have been working in Haiti for over 20 years, in times of emergency as well as in a long-term commitment to improving the health infrastructure. They are currently looking for qualified surgeons and nurses.
More organizations
Build a fundraising page with MercyCorps

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Updated [01.14.2010 @ 3 PM EST]: Key news items and op-eds:

Barack Obama: “Unwavering support”
U.S. grants temporary protection status to Haitians; sends troops
Red Cross: 45,000-50,000 dead
Tracy Kidder: Country Without a Net
Bill Clinton: What we can do to help Haiti, now and beyond
Nicolas Sarkozy: Time to end Haiti’s “curse”

Updated [01.14.2010 @ 11 PM EST]: US Military Plan of Action Established and Underway

Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates has shifted all of the resources of the US Department of Defense towards providing relief. General Douglas Fraser of the US Southern Command publically announced the Haiti relief plan on Thursday at a press conference held at the U.S. Southern Command Headquarters in Doral, Florida. The main areas addressed by Douglas focused on improving life sustaining capabilities and to provide assistance in the relief efforts in order to mitigate the suffering as soon as humanly possible. Some of the areas discussed:

An initial Commander and Control has been set up until communication capability has been reestablished
Opening the air field and making it operate on a 24/7 schedule
4 Coastguard cutters to provide helicopters and any additional support it can
A navy destroyer will also be providing helicopter support as well as the fuel needed to keep all the helicopters running.
A Threat and Disaster Relief assessment team has been organized in order to get an accurate survey of the extent of the damage
Paratroopers have been dispatched
Carrier USS Carl Vinson is scheduled to arrive on the morning of the 15th to provide additional helicopters and serve as the platform that will alleviate the organization problems faced due to the poorly established infrastructure that currently exists in Haiti
Marines are scheduled to bring the heavy equipment necessary to provide capacity and capability on the 19^th
USNS Comfort hospital ship is is scheduled to arrive on the 22^nd

Updated [01.15.2010 @ 12:30 PM EST]: The Big Picture

Two days later, the extent of the damage is seen in these harrowing photographs at the Boston Globe. Click on the image to see the photo-essay of devastation and rescue.

Updated [01.15.2010 @ 4 PM EST]:

The U.S. military reopens the Port-au-Prince airport

Updated [01.15.2010 @ 8:30 PM EST]:

Port-au- Prince is not the only area in Haiti that needs help.

Updated [01.16.2010 @ 10:30 AM EST]:

T-Mobile USA Waives Call Charges to and From Haiti

T-Mobile USA is enabling phone calls for current customers to Haiti without charges for international long distance through January 31, 2010, and retroactive to the earthquake on January 12, 2010. Additionally, T-Mobile customers who may already be in Haiti will be able to roam on T-Mobile’s partner networks in Haiti (operated locally in Haiti under the names Voila and Digicel) free-of-charge through the end of the month.

T- Mobile also pledge to assist in wireless restoration.

Updated [01.17.2010 @ 10:30 AM EST]: Prevention and Rebuilding

Many are asking if this tragedy that resulted from the earthquake could have been prevented. Back in 2008 two geophysicists who study fault lines in the Caribbean predicted that the fault line that Haiti sits upon called the Enriquillo fault could produce a 7.2 magnitude quake. The plates of the fault had been slipping past each other at about 7 millimeters per year for the last 250 years and the geophysicists predicted that it was time to snap.

While the earthquake could not have been prevented, the scientists believe that there was enough forewarning to implement emergency plans for when the earthquake would occur. While the limited resources of Haiti did not allow it to upgrade every single building standing, some buildings , such as hospitals and governmental buildings, could have been designated as critical and plans to strengthen these could been made. These areas could have served as the base from which all rescue efforts could be organized.

Unfortunately these plans were not made and to dwell on the errors of the past will not resolve the current problems that exist today. Once all rescue efforts have been exhausted, we can take learn from the errors that were made and not repeat them. When the reconstruction phase begins, NGO’s like Architecture for Humanity can work to ensure that another tragedy like the one that occurred this week will not recur.

Updated [01.17.2010 @ 11:30 AM EST]: Earthquake on Ocean Floor

On Sunday morning, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake was detected by seismologists In the Drake Passage on Atlantic Ocean floor between South America and Antarctica. The quake had no effect on nearby lands.

Updated [01.17.2010 @ 10:00 PM EST]

The CDC has deployed staff to Haiti to assist in the emergency response and guide the efforts to minimize public health impacts in the coming months. It has also updated several relevant resources for health care providers and responders:

Updated by Jennifer Weinberg [01.19.2010 @ 9:00 am EST]

Partners in Health (PIH) is one of many organizations from around the globe dedicating efforts to the earthquake victims in Haiti. As this organization has been working in Haiti for over 25 years, they are in a unique position to understand the multitude of factors contributing to this tragedy.

Watch a PIH Executive Director Ophelia Dahl discuss the importance of long term rebuilding efforts with CBS’s Katie Couric.

Read an op-ed by PIH co-founder Paul Farmer focusing on the importance of building back better.

Updated [01.20.2010 @ 2:20 PM]:

As inquiries about volunteering in Haiti keep pouring in, while after-shocks rattle the island and life-saving supplies are turned away for lack of logistics support, the World Journal of Surgery shares some thoughts on the “cardinal sins” of humanitarian medicine.

Updated [01.20.2010 @ 8:30 PM]: More ways you can help

If you are a health professional interested in volunteering to help, the American Academy of Family Physicians can link you organizations that are in Haiti.

The Pan American Health and Education Foundation’s is an independent philanthropic organization working to build public health expertise to be able to innovatively lead development of healthier generations of people in the Americas. It has set up a Disaster Relief Fund to help bring critically needed emergency supplies for affected families and to support recovery efforts in Haiti.

Habitat for Humanity has worked with Haiti for over 26 years and will continue to serve the people there by helping to rebuild.

Nine Medical Teams International volunteer physicians and nurses are hard at work at various hospitals in Port au Prince. At Kings Hospital, a 350 bed inpatient facility that survived the earthquake the physicians are providing care to those who would have died without the help of the volunteers.

Updated [01.21.2010 @ 11:30 PM]: When Good Intentions Make Things Worse ; Record Donations; and Mass Movements

Haitian government figures relayed by the European Commission put the death toll at 200,000, with 80,000 buried in mass graves. The commission now estimates 2 million homeless, up from 1.5 million, and says 250,000 are in need of urgent aid. The countless number of untreated injuries that many Haitians still have will continue to add to the earthquake’s death toll. Lack of food and water will also contribute to the death toll. .” Partners in Health, an organization that has been providing health care in Haiti for two decades, estimated that 20,000 Haitians were dying daily from lack of surgery.

In an effort to prevent the loss of more lives, health experts have arrived in Haiti from Israel, Cuba, Portugal and other countries, many with stocks of medicine and supplies as well as extensive experience in disaster conditions. And the United States Navy hospital ship Comfort pulled up off the Haitian coast to handle the worst-off patients.

One of the problems with the relief effort is that there is a lack of organization and communication between the various aid agencies. “Nobody knows how many doctors, how many nurses have come to Haiti,” said Dr. Henriette Chamouillet, head of the World Health Organization in Haiti. “No one is providing the government with the data it needs.

Disaster organizers say good intentions gone wrong are another hindrance to the recovery effort.” Some examples include volunteer medical teams who have gone to Haiti on their own, without the support of established organizations that have the prior experience in disaster relief and working in developing nations, may actually use up the resources that could have been used to help the victims of the earthquake. Contacting one of the many organizations listed in the earlier updates of this post can help the individual healthcare worker allocate his or her skill sets in a way that will not take away from those that need aid.

For many organizations, donating money, rather than goods, is the better way to provide aid. Jeff Nene, a spokesman for Convoy of Hope, a Springfield, Mo., agency that feeds 11,000 children a day in Haiti, urges cash donations that allow his group to buy in bulk from large suppliers and retailers. “When people give $1, it translates into $7 in the field,” he said. “If they spend $5 for bottled water, that’s nice and it makes them feel good, but probably it costs us more than $5 to send it. If they give us $5, we can get $35 worth of water.”

According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s recently released a survey, donations to relief groups working in Haiti are breaking fund-raising records. The survey was based on a tally on proceeds reported by the nation’s 22 largest charities and it showed that US charities raised more than $150 million in the four days after the quake. The Chronicle’s survey doesn’t include the sums raised by smaller charities, such as the $25 million by Partners in Health. Among the biggest recipients was the American Red Cross, which has raised $87 million for Haiti so far. Small texted donations account for $16 million of the $150 million raised so far.

Despite the slow progress in coordinating the communications between the organizations providing aid in Haiti, the Haitian government has been able to begin the process of moving 400,00 earthquake victims to new settlements outside of the haphazard camps in Port-au- prince that have been set up in the days following the earthquake. The United Nations supports this move because the consolidation of the nearly 450 homeless encampments in Port-au-Prince alone will help to streamline food distribution.

Updated [01.30.2010 @ 1:20 PM]: Surveillance for Disease, and Advocacy for Investment

Dr. James Wilson’s epidemiology surveillance of infectious disease outbreaks in Haiti: Operational Biosurveillance
Dr. Paul Farmer’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Video | Transcript

Updated [02. 18.2010 @ 9:30 AM]:In President Preval’s Own Words

The president of the Haiti talks about his initial response to the crisis.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In the Season of Mud

Hana Akselrod — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:50:56 +0000

What happens after the relief services pack up and the foreign volunteers go home? Today’s article in the New York Times by Neil MacFarquhar writing from Gonaïves is an all-too-rare example of follow-up during the off-season of catastrophe. Half a year after a succession of hurricanes left hundreds of people dead and Haiti’s desperately fragile infrastructure in tatters, the people of Gonaïves are still struggling to resume normalcy — two-thirds of the city have yet to be repaired — even as they fearfully muster their defenses against future storms.

No other city in Haiti absorbed so much punishment. More than 30 inches of rain fell overnight. The deforested hills, less than 2 percent of them covered by trees, sent the spill-off crashing down into La Quinte River, the wall of water and mud eventually cresting at 15 feet above its banks.

By the time it receded from the city streets, the flood had killed 466 inhabitants; another 235 just disappeared and are presumed dead. Of the city’s 33,000 buildings, 5,441 collapsed and some 22,300 others were damaged. Nationally, damages came to a total of $900 million, or nearly 15 percent of the gross domestic product.

“All it takes is one cloud, and everyone asks me when they will be evacuated,” groused the deputy mayor, Jean-François Adolphe, when asked about the mood here. The City Council tried to develop a plan, he said, but readily admitted it was basically fruitless. The city does not have a place to shelter anyone, not to mention the means to ferry its inhabitants to higher ground.

Earlier this month, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and former US President Bill Clinton visited Haiti to meet with President Rene Preval to discuss Haiti’s predicament and the poverty trap affecting its people. As has been clear for many years, any serious plans for the country’s recovery will have to address not only provision of basic services and securing food supplies, but also long-term job creation and environmental recovery efforts. Another certainty is that such efforts will require thorough changes in North America’s relationship to Haiti in terms of support and funding; although the UN released a request for $108 million for hurricane recovery in Haiti, less than half of that has been raised. A high-level donor conference will take place in Washington, DC, later this spring.

More on the hurricanes, Haiti’s future, and a putative new chapter in US-Haiti relations:

UNICEF: Surveying storm preparedness in Gonaives.

Paul Farmer and Brian Concannon: “Change Haiti Can Believe In”

US Conference of Catholic Bishops: Cardinal Francis George urges Obama to grant Temporary Protected Status to Haiti for the next 18 months.