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How the UN Might Have Inadvertently Started a Cholera Epidemic In Haiti
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Celso Perez and Muneer Ahmad write in The Atlantic that despite evidence to the contrary, for nearly three years, the United Nations has categorically denied that it introduced cholera into Haiti after the country suffered a devastating earthquake in 2010. Since then, cholera has killed more than 8,000 people and infected more than 600,000, creating an ongoing epidemic. According to extensive documentation by scientists and journalists, peacekeeping troops belonging to the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) inadvertently but negligently brought cholera into the country several months after the January 2010 earthquake. That October, troops from Nepal carrying the disease were stationed at a military base near the town of Méyè. Because of inadequate water and sanitation facilities at the base, cholera-infected sewage contaminated the Artibonite River, the largest river in Haiti and one the country's main water sources. As locals consumed the contaminated water, cholera spread across the country. Absent from Haiti for over a century, cholera is now projected to plague the country for at least another decade. 'By refusing to acknowledge responsibility, the United Nations jeopardizes its standing and moral authority in Haiti and in other countries where its personnel are deployed,' writes the Washington Post Editorial Board adding that without 'speaking frankly about its own responsibility for introducing cholera to Haiti, the organization does a disservice to Haiti and Haitians, who deserve better.'"
They're poor as hell and need aid of their own and they have rebels.
Bwahahahahahahaha. The UN lost it's moral authority decades ago, when it became nothing more than a organ to bash Israel and the US.
Both deserve to be bashed.
It's not a zero-sum game: the cost involved in preventing it happening is so low that it's a no-brainer to send in the aid without bringing in a monstrously contagious disease, so the UN should be considering this idea even as a matter of principle.
Of course that'd mean looking past the idea that one is being blamed for something one is not responsible for. Lots of people lose their pragmatism in that situation.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I think the UN has a responsibility to ensure that if any of its troops have cholera, they're not at a base with poor sanitation, as an organisational lesson if not a matter of responsibility and blame.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Even if they did accidentally bring cholera in, it's the terrible state of sanitation in Haiti that has turned it into an epidemic. Haiti would have likely seen cholera even if the UN hadn't come in. Someone would have just brought it in later. And I dare say they help the outsiders have provided has far outweighed any harm they've done.
And yet for a century Haiti hasn't had a cholera problem...
You know, you are going to die someday, so maybe you should hurry the process and do it now. You know, since its going to happen one day anyways...
Be seeing you...
First, there's no evidence that UN has started the cholera epidemic. No bacterial strain genotyping has been performed. Second, in such cases a cholera epidemic is more-or-less a certainty - it makes no sense to search for the index case, especially because choleric bacteria occur naturally.
O Rly?
No. It lists its authority when they did nothing worthwhile during the Rwanda genocide and the Bosnia genocide. TWO genocides and they did nothing.
The UN deserves to be laughed at and not be taken seriously.
The Palestine/Israel situation is another reason. But not due to bashing Israel, but for not being able to do anything at all to solve the conflict.
I'm pretty sure that the first rule of helping is "Don't introduce a hitherto absent, highly contagious, disease to a country infrastructurally incapable of coping with it, killing more than 7,000 and sickening just short of 600,000."
Well, maybe not the first rule; but one of the important ones. Virtually every country (even two-bit ones where these controls are largely nominal because the border functionaries are deeply inadequate to the task) has rules in place to avoid the introduction of novel crop pests and at least some diseases, so it isn't as though the concept is a novel one.
Failing to perform a "Do our staff harbor any diseases that would spread like wildfire in a country with ghastly sanitation and minimal resources" check before heading into a country with ghastly sanitation and minimal resources is somewhere between incompetence and reckless indifference.
Ahem. One of the more important tasks of ANY modern military garrison is to ensure hygiene. Starting with sewage and waste disposal. . . . A century or more ago, disease often killed more troops in the field than the actual fighting did. . .
In fairness to the UN, it should be noted that (the face of overwhelming 'evidence' from those fancy 'biologists' that they could no longer deny) the UN has changed its position from "Cholera? Wasn't us, probably just Haiti being filthy." to "Yeah, it was us; but we enjoy impunity, haha."
It's always nice to see somebody owning up to their mistakes.
Bullshit. They did nothing. They released resolution afterwards declaring them genocides and tried to prosecute to aggressors. But that's it.
Yes, they declared to extend their mission to serbian Bosnia. In reality and effectively they just watched and did nothing worthwhile for weeks and months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_Massacre
"In April 1993, the United Nations declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica in the Drina Valley of north-eastern Bosnia a "safe area" under UN protection. However, in July 1995, the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), represented on the ground by a 400-strong contingent of Dutch peacekeepers, Dutchbat, did not prevent the town's capture by the VRS and the subsequent massacre."
"Then in 2005, in a message to the tenth anniversary commemoration of the genocide, the Secretary-General of the United Nations noted that, while blame lay first and foremost with those who planned and carried out the massacre and those who assisted and harboured them, great nations had failed to respond adequately, the UN itself had made serious errors of judgement and the tragedy of Srebrenica would haunt the UN's history forever"
In a nutshell : you are talking bullshit, you don't deserve the mod points and the UN did nothing. End of.
"starting illegal wars (Iraq, Afghanistan)."
Iraq is fair, Afghanistan is not, because the latter was almost unanimously approved by the UN and was supported by a plethora of other countries because of that.