Thanks to
Jake Johnston for tweeting the link to this
Christian Science Monitor report:
Hurricane Sandy puts renewed pressure on food supply in Haiti. Excerpt:
“In and around the [southern] city of Les Cayes, there is flooding everywhere,” says Pélèg Charles, a spokesman for the charity Oxfam UK, from his office in the capital Port-au-Prince. “It’s disastrous.… But we won’t know how bad it really is for several days.”
Contaminated water and devastated crops
Mr. Charles says that Oxfam has already received reports of some 150 new cases of cholera since the storm pulled out of the Caribbean this weekend.
“We will not know for five to seven days if there is a new outbreak,” he says, “but we’re very worried about the spread.”
Cholera can spread quickly in contaminated water, and has killed more than 7,000 Haitians and sickened hundreds of thousands others since an outbreak began in October 2010.
Sandy was the second deadly storm to hit the country since late August, when Hurricane Isaac killed at least two dozen.
“Most of the agricultural crops that were left from Hurricane Isaac were destroyed during Sandy,” Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told Reuters. At least a dozen bridges were destroyed and a key route that connects Haiti and the Dominican Republic was severely damaged, according to the government.
The impact on food security is a top concern for government officials. Recent spikes in food costs have contributed to social unrest in recent months, marked by nationwide demonstrations to protest double-digit rises in the costs of staples like rice and cooking oil.
MSPP's last cholera report was for October 19. I have no idea when the next tally will be published, but it's likely to be incomplete—maybe more incomplete than usual, given the impact of Sandy.
It's striking that the political hot button isn't cholera, which was imported by foreign political intervention. Apparently Haitians don't mind enduring what amounts to accidental germ warfare against them. But mess with the price of rice and cooking oil, and you go too far.
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