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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday August 20 2016, @06:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-are-they-fixing-it? dept.

The United Nations acknowledged on Thursday that it played a role in the 2010 Haiti cholera outbreak that has killed nearly 10,000 Haitians and infected more than 770,000.

[...] US courts have repeatedly rejected complaints filed by the families of cholera victims in New York, where the UN is headquartered, due to the world body's immunity.

A UN official quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that "the UN legal position has not changed".

Cholera, which is transmitted through contaminated drinking water and causes acute diarrhoea, is a major challenge in a country with poor sanitary conditions.

According to the UN, Some 72 percent of Haitians have no toilets at home and 42 percent still lack access to drinking water.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/admits-role-deadly-haiti-cholera-outbreak-160819064248187.html


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 20 2016, @10:11PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 20 2016, @10:11PM (#390740) Journal

    This begs the question, "how far should we go to prevent viral contamination?"

    It's not hard to cheaply test for and fly out or quarantine people suffering from cholera. It's not hard to set up a proper latrine and have your people use it. And of course, a cholera epidemic is a obvious risk of a country-scale disaster.

    Given that 10,000 people died (which would have been a significant increase in the body count from the earthquake - a bit under 10%) and around 800k people allegedly showed symptoms (over 7% of the country, folks), we probably can justify going much further than necessary to prevent such a disaster.