Cholera Then - And Now
This week, a Yale Law School study entitled "Peacekeeping without Accountability" confirms that Nepalese troops brought cholera to Haiti in 2010 in the wake of the earthquake.
According to the report, "Sanitation infrastructure at their base in Méyè was haphazardly constructed, and as a result, sewage from the base contaminated the nearby tributary." A month after the troops arrived, the first case of cholera appeared.
The cholera epidemic in Haiti, which researchers say is the largest in the world, sickened more than 600,000 and killed approximately 8,000 people.
Young readers learning about cholera for the first time through historical fiction titles such as The Great Trouble, may well think that such things are in the past, and could not happen in our time. Certainly Dr. John Snow, back in September 1854, hoped that his work would bring an end to outbreaks of this disease.
You can find the Yale report, which calls for the UN to accept responsibility for the outbreak, here:
http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf...
According to the report, "Sanitation infrastructure at their base in Méyè was haphazardly constructed, and as a result, sewage from the base contaminated the nearby tributary." A month after the troops arrived, the first case of cholera appeared.
The cholera epidemic in Haiti, which researchers say is the largest in the world, sickened more than 600,000 and killed approximately 8,000 people.
Young readers learning about cholera for the first time through historical fiction titles such as The Great Trouble, may well think that such things are in the past, and could not happen in our time. Certainly Dr. John Snow, back in September 1854, hoped that his work would bring an end to outbreaks of this disease.
You can find the Yale report, which calls for the UN to accept responsibility for the outbreak, here:
http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf...
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