The Next Disaster for Haiti

The devastating earthquake is sadly only the beginning:

That vulnerability will be felt first in the water. In a major disaster, time is of the essence, and survivors will succumb to thirst and dehydration much faster than malnutrition. With drinking water distribution systems destroyed — and survivors crammed into camps without much sanitation — water supplies could quickly become contaminated. That can lead to rapidly spreading water-borne diseases like cholera and dysentery, which can sweep through refugee camps. (In the 1994 Rwanda refugee crisis, cholera took some 45,000 lives in less than three weeks.) That, in turn, puts emergency responders in a race against time — shipping in clean water or purifying existing supplies before diseases start spreading. And it’s not just drinking water that will be in demand. Latrines need to be set up quickly to prevent contamination. “It’s called WatSan — water and sanitation,” says Patrick McCormick, a spokesperson for UNICEF. “That will be the key.”…

The next danger will be existing infectious diseases that might attack survivors — especially in the cramped and less than hygienic conditions of a refugee camp. Measles and other childhood infections will be particularly worrying, especially since nearly half of Haiti’s population is under the age of 18, and many are already in poor health. Doctors will need to launch vaccination drives to protect the vulnerable and do so fast. In past disasters, like the 2004 Asian tsunami, lack of vaccinations before the event had a major impact on the spread of diseases after it.

When you take a country already ravaged by poverty - thanks in large part to a series of corrupt governments - and add a natural disaster that destroys the infrastructure and what limited medical services that were available, you have the recipe for a humanitarian disaster that may well dwarf the 2004 Indonesian tsunami.

It will take years for Haiti to recover, though there's no guarantee they ever will.