Major Aid Organizations "Duped Donors" and "Failed Haiti" Group Charges

(Georgianne Nienaber) The Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) released an online petition today, targeting leaders of major disaster relief and aid organizations for failing to do more to prevent the cholera outbreak in Haiti ten months after a devastating earthquake killed up to 300,000 and left 1.5 million homeless. Major relief organizations raised billions of dollars, while telling the public that their relief efforts included water and sanitation work. With half of the funds raised still in the bank, DAP says that aid organizations failed to use the funds with the same urgency conveyed to donors, and that a cholera epidemic was avoidable. (more)

UN worries its troops caused cholera in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti –  It began as a rumor that farmers saw waste from a U.N. peacekeeping base flow into a river. Within days of the talk, hundreds downstream had died from cholera.

The mounting circumstantial evidence that U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal brought cholera to Haiti was largely dismissed by U.N. officials. Haitians who asked about it were called political or paranoid. Foreigners were accused of playing "the blame game." The World Health Organization said the question was simply "not a priority." (more)

(Reuters) - Haiti's cholera epidemic will inevitably spread to the Dominican Republic but is likely to cause less devastation there, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday

Many Haitians work in the Dominican Republic and because cholera infections often do not show symptoms, the water-borne disease could easily cross the border, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told a U.N. news briefing in Geneva. (More)

Cholera Victims Fill Gym in Haiti (Video)

Where is Haiti?

Haiti

Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti (République d'Haïti ; Repiblik Ayiti) is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. (more)