Haiti tries to get hurricane aid right but cholera weighs

Foreign medics with orange stretchers and gallons of chlorine are stemming a cholera outbreak on Haiti’s hurricane-struck coast but the focus on a disease UN peacekeepers brought here six years ago is slowing the delivery of food and shelter for storm victims. Hurricane Matthew ripped through this southwestern region of Haiti last week, killing at least 1,000 people and leaving 1.4mn in need of aid, including hundreds of thousands made homeless.It also trashed crops and unleashed a new cholera surge.Along the shattered coastal landscape of virtually flattened villages, angry residents have set up blockades of broken trees and branches to try to stop the trucks of food and other aid they have seen speed past them.The roadblocks reflect an anger that could quickly escalate if aid agencies and the government do not speed up relief efforts in the poorest country in the Americas.“The donations keep passing and they don’t stop. We need food and shelter,” said Jean Jacques, 30, a fisherman and subsistence farmer.Around him, around 50 local residents complained nobody had helped them.The United Nations and aid organisations are now rushing out across areas hit hardest by the hurricane, the biggest relief operation in Haiti since a devastating 2010 earthquake.But the massive effort needed to control a new spike in cholera since the hurricane and the tensions over food deliveries are a reminder of the history of foreign help to Haiti that has at times done as much harm as good.In October 2010, Nepali peacekeepers accidentally introduced cholera into Haiti when their camp emptied infected sewage into a river.The disease has since killed more than 9,000 people.“They recognise they are guilty and for that reason they try to help,” said Haitian doctor Marie Sophia Sanon, who heads the cholera unit in Jeremie, the largest town near the hurricane’s path and now largely reduced to rubble.Since last week, she has saved 72 people suffering the disease that kills with diarrhea.At least $9.5bn of aid sloshed into Haiti in two years after the 2010 earthquake, which the government says killed more than 300,000 people.But many aid groups had priorities that often did not chime with the country’s needs.Too much food aid undercut prices for farmers’ own produce and hit sales at stores, damaging the economy and making it harder for Haiti to get back on its feet.Too many tents and not enough building materials trapped people in shanty and tent cities for years. The American Red Cross, which raised some $500mn for earthquake relief, was scorned for building just six houses, although it says it helped tens of thousands of Haitians with home repairs.This time, Haiti and its partners are determined to avoid those mistakes, even as the early days of the relief effort appear chaotic.“If they are not co-ordinated, we will have exactly the situation that we had after the earthquake, where everybody went in one place, where everybody brought the same sort of support,” UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator Mourad Wahba said.The Haitian Red Cross, which in 2010 focused on community first aid, food distribution and shelter, said on Tuesday its main concern now is cholera.Pouring resources into tackling the outbreak, however, means less is available to address other urgent needs.The United Nations, which has released $5mn from an emergency fund and launched a $120mn appeal for Haiti, has also made tackling cholera a priority of relief efforts.One of the most significant criticisms of reconstruction efforts after the earthquake was how little was done on disaster preparedness, while other densely populated, poor countries such as India and Bangladesh have made great strides.This year, the World Bank-managed Haiti Reconstruction Fund redirected $14mn earmarked for natural disaster mitigation in southern Haiti to energy projects, a June financial report showed.The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction on Tuesday said Haiti is “the world’s most dangerous country” when natural disasters strike.“The question now has to be asked why six years after the Haitian earthquake, adequate multiple hazard warning systems are not in place to ensure minimal loss of life in events such as this,” spokesman Denis McLean said.Cholera has killed up to 173 people since Hurricane Matthew ripped through the southern peninsula, churning human waste with river and well water and destroying homes, crops and livestock.