Blog 1: Cholera Epidemic --Where does it all go?

It has now been just over a year since the devastating earthquake in Haiti.  The death toll as a direct result of the event has been recorded at 230,000, with over 1.3 million people homeless.  This 7.0 magnitude event is nothing shy of a global disaster.  Media coverage just shortly after the event was pretty immense.  Within a matter of days, the Red Cross sent in a relief team from Geneva with two planes loaded with emergency food aid.  NGOs such as, UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee, Samaritan’s Purse, and even the Red Cross instantly began asking for donations to help fund this international assistance.  However within a few months, the story just seemed to fall off the face of the planet.

As far as the general public is concerned, ‘no news is good news”.

October 19, 2010, cholera outbreaks began to be seen in Haiti’s central plateau.  These outbreaks have expanded into epidemics by around December 8, 2010.  At around this point in time, Haiti was the front page article and headline news story for many media centers around the world.  It is pretty obvious to guess what happened next.  A new cycle of advertising by the NGOs I listed, sprung up again in many ways, shapes and forms.

Now for a naïve, 22 year old university student bent on studying for exams and enjoying my winter vacation, I did not hear a word about the cholera epidemics until I returned to school in January.  I just so happened to be unfortunate enough to hear about it from the clipboard mafia at UBC.  These are the poor individuals hanging around the Tim Horton’s and White Spot who try to get you to sign up and donate for a good cause.  Most people milling about try to pretend that the clipboard mafia don’t exist, and begin to walk around more purposefully and avoid eye contact as to not become sucked in for a mere two minutes to hear about a cause.  I was one such person avoiding eye contact when one of these mafia hippies looked at me and quite abrasively asked, “do you have a moment to save a life?”
How can any decent human refuse a request like that?

I was quickly informed by this UNICEF volunteer about the cholera epidemic that is plaguing Haiti and that my monthly donation via Master or Visa Card would help turn the advancing tides of death and sorrow.  After hastily scrambling out of the situation (with the saving grace of not owning a credit card), I began to ponder where the money actually went.

After doing some brief research on various NGOs online, I quickly realized how much advertising was being done to gain donations from individuals browsing around their sites.  Almost every page I visited had a link directing me back to a form to fill out for an online donation.  With all the searching I did only one site, UNICEF, offered a vague summary of how much money would provide basic needs.  This still did not answer my question about where the money was actually going.  It also led me to believe that media is acting as more of a utility to boost donations to a certain organization, but not really solving anything on ground level in Haiti.

It seems to me that to the general North American population, Haiti was becoming a fad.  News spread like wildfire across Twitter and Facebook.  4 out of the 10 most popular topics posted on twitter were related to Haiti.  Not only is there promotion on the big social network sites, but also via text messaging service providers.  You can donate $10 dollars to Red Cross just by texting the word HAITI to 90999.  Mechanisms like these facilitate the donation process since they just tag the bill onto your monthly service provider invoice.
The idea of throwing money at Haiti without knowing where it goes is a big issue for me.  From what I gather, all of these NGOs are just offering aid in terms of doctoral care, personal water purification devices, shelter, and for the religious even prayer.  This to me seems like treating an infection with a bandage.  It’s not getting to the root of the problem:  where someone in Port-au-Prince gets their drinking water is where someone else’s bathroom is.  The infrastructure needs to be restored to beat the epidemic.  If the problem is not solved at the roots, these NGOs will have no reason to get out of Haiti and the local population will take much longer to recover.

Resources:

Direct Relief International:
http://www.directrelief.org/EmergencyResponse/2010/HaitiCholera.aspx?gclid=CJiamuuj7aYCFQRvbAodaA2GEg

Doctors Without Borders:
http://www.msf.ca/

Fox News on texting and scams:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/01/25/haiti-earthquake-aftermath-help/

UNICEF donation page:
https://secure.unicef.ca/portal/SmartDefault.aspx?at=1211&appealID=90&CID=91&gclid=CIm7npmh7aYCFRtVgwodQykVIg

Red Cross on Haiti:
http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=000005&tid=003

International Rescue Committee:
http://www.rescue.org/special-reports/crisis-haiti?ms=gg_zzzz_zzz_zzzz_kg_11zzzz&gclid=CPS07dWg7aYCFQRubAodeUDuEw

Haiti Facts:
http://hubpages.com/hub/Haiti-Earthquake-Facts

Social Networking and Haiti:
http://teck.in/sms-donation-and-twitter-trends-on-haiti-earthquake.html

The Samaritan’s Purse:
http://www.samaritanspurse.ca/ourwork/reliefwork/Haiti/webinar.aspx