Haiti Cholera Epidemic Could Sicken 779,000 This Year .

     New estimate much higher than U.N. projections, which were used to allocate resources

TUESDAY, March 15 (HealthDay News) -- The cholera epidemic in Haiti this year will be far worse than the 400,000 cases predicted by the United Nations, new study findings indicate.

There could be nearly twice as many cases of the potentially deadly diarrheal disease -- an estimated 779,000 -- between March and November of this year, according to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and Harvard Medical School.

The discrepancy is important because U.N. projections determine the allocation of resources to fight the disease, said the authors of the study, published March 16 in The Lancet.

"The epidemic is not likely to be short-term," Dr. Sanjay Basu, a UCSF medical resident, said in a university news release. "It is going to be larger than predicted in terms of sheer numbers and will last far longer than the initial projections."

The cholera epidemic erupted in Haiti after last year's devastating earthquake. Cholera -- spread from person-to-person through contaminated food and water -- can be deadly if untreated. In most cases, treatment for the diarrhea caused by the disease involves rehydration with salty liquids.

Late last year, the U.N. projected that a total of 400,000 people in Haiti would eventually become infected with cholera. They reached that total by assuming that cholera would infect 2 to 4 percent of Haiti's population of 10 million. But the U.N. estimate did not take into account existing disease trends, or factors such as where water was contaminated, how the disease is transmitted, or human immunity to cholera, Basu said.

Basu and colleague Dr. Jason Andrews, a fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, used data from Haiti's Ministry of Health and other sources to develop a more sophisticated model of the spread of cholera in several provinces in Haiti.

That led to their predictions of 779,000 cases of cholera and about 11,100 deaths in the next eight months.

The researchers also examined the impact of making clean water more available and the use of vaccines or antibiotics. They found that a 1 percent decrease in the number of people who drink contaminated water would prevent more than 100,000 cases of cholera and about 1,500 deaths this year.

In addition, simply offering vaccination to an estimated 10 percent of the population could save about 900 lives, and more widespread use of antibiotics could prevent 9,000 cases of cholera and about 1,300 deaths.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about cholera.

-- Robert Preidt

What is the difference between those three campaigns videos of Obama , Mc Cain and Manigat ?

Response : If you are  candidate, people have the right to protest against you , you cannot send your security to beat them up  . Obama chose to speak with that protester , Mc Cain chose to shut up . Mirlande chose to send her her security to beat the protesters up ....... think about it

So please Manigat , please !!!!!!!!

ADOPTED ID 60 Minutes documentary , everybody should watch it

Found in a ditch at birth a young woman who was adopted to a Canadian family , bravely return to Haiti to find her mother that left her .

synopsis:

This film uncovers the extraordinary journey of Judith Craig.  Abandoned at birth, she bravely returns to the impoverished nation of Haiti to find her parents. 

From the poverty-stricken families who’ve given up a child to the foreign families looking to adopt one, these disparate worlds collide amid Judith’s quest to solve the puzzle of her past.  With the sights and sounds of pre-earthquake Haiti as a backdrop, these intersecting lives provide a rare and intimate insight into the conditions surrounding transnational adoption. 

The Impact:

The aftermath of the horrific Haiti earthquake highlighted the need for transracial adoption and the benefit of families of wealthy nations assisting families of poorer nations.  In this phenomenon, little is known of the future impact on transracially adopted children. 

Adopted ID provides insight into the complexities of this relatively new type of family. Judith Craig, has lived it, felt it, understands it and wants to give back to other children and parents who are experiencing the same family dynamic.

Judith hopes this film will change the way you understand interracial adoption.

What we need from you:

The rough cut of the entire film is complete. All the shooting and editing is done. What your money will go towards is paying for the music composition, archive footage, sound mixing and the final picture enhancement edit - all of which enable the film to be broadcast.

Other Ways You Can Help:

Please get the word out about the film and this fundraising campaign. Essentially, the film needs distribution, to be broadcast so a maximum amount of people can watch it. Your support is essential for this success.

Follow that link for the whole story and to help : http://www.indiegogo.com/Adopted-ID-60-minute-documentary

Singer Martelly woos Haiti voters with popular touch

   THOMONDE, Haiti (Reuters) - Like the seasoned entertainer that he is, Haitian carnival music star and presidential contender Michel "Sweet Mickey" Martelly is working the crowd.
    Gesticulating with one hand, cracking jokes in Creole, the 50-year-old, shaven-headed singer draws cheers and hoots of laughter from his audience, showing the powerful communication skills and popular touch he hopes will propel him into his country's top job in a run-off vote on Sunday.
    Far from being unnerved by suggestions from the camp of his politically more experienced opponent, 70-year-old former first lady and law professor Mirlande Manigat, that he lacks the profile to be president, Martelly has turned the personality issue into a campaign weapon.
    Responding to critics' jibes that his colorful past as an iconoclastic entertainer -- which has included antics like dropping his trousers on stage -- disqualifies him from being president, the wealthy star of Haiti's catchy Konpa carnival music is brashly unrepentant.
    "They've been saying I dropped my trousers. Yes, I did. But I always pulled them back up again," he said, drawing guffaws from the mostly young audience packed into the square of the farming town of Thomonde in Haiti's Central Plateau region.
    "There are people who've been dropping their trousers over the heads of Haitians for 20 years at the National Palace but they never pulled them back up," Martelly bellowed into the microphone, wearing a pink striped polo shirt and blue jeans.
    In Sunday's decisive run-off that will elect a successor to President Rene Preval, policies seem to be taking a backseat to personal styles in the contest to choose a leader for the Western Hemisphere's least developed state.
    Overwhelmed by poverty, corruption and mismanagement for decades, the hapless Caribbean country bears the still raw scars of a devastating 2010 earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people. Haiti also suffered floods and a deadly cholera epidemic after the quake.
    The United Nations, with a more than 12,000-strong peacekeeping force in Haiti, and the United States and other major foreign donors hope Sunday's vote will deliver stable new leadership and avoid the chaos, widespread fraud and unrest that marred the Nov. 28 election first round.
    Political neophyte Martelly is telling voters his energetic style is just what the country needs to blow away the cobwebs of a jaundiced political establishment viewed as selfish, corrupt and ineffectual by most Haitians.
    "We represent a new way of doing and thinking," he told Reuters after addressing the Thomonde crowd. "We represent the wind that is blowing to establish a new state of law, a state where public function becomes service to the people, contrary to what is happening today," he added.
    A recent opinion poll by local pollster Brides put Martelly ahead in the contest, with nearly 51 percent of the vote. The survey gave rival Manigat some 46 percent.
    "PINK MILITIA"
    Underlining the contrast in styles, opposition matriarch Manigat, who has years of experience in politics and academic life, sees a possible threat to Haiti's fragile democracy in Martelly's muscular style and the way he mobilizes supporters.
    At a news conference in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday, law professor Manigat accused Martelly supporters of attacking with stones and bottles a rally she tried to hold in Mirebalais, south of Thomonde, in the Central Plateau on Tuesday. At least one person was hurt, she said.
    Referring to the party color of pink worn by Martelly and his fanatical young backers, she denounced what she called the apparent formation of a "pink militia" that she said could pose a dangerous threat of political intolerance.
    "I don't desire a dictatorship for my country, wherever it comes from," she said, appealing for calm among voters.
    Madame Manigat is battling perceptions from some critics that her Sorbonne education and professorial style may be keeping her aloof from a largely destitute and poorly educated Haitian electorate.
    The wife of former President Leslie Manigat, who was elected in 1988 but forced into exile by a coup soon afterward, Manigat gained the most votes in the November 2010 election first round but not enough to win outright. She would be Haiti's first elected female president if she wins.
    In an echo of the ill-tempered first round, Martelly exhorted supporters to "vote -- and watch out," saying plans were afoot to "steal" what he forecast would be his victory.
    Haiti's already feverish political climate is being stoked by reports that this week may see ousted ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a leftist, charismatic former Catholic priest, return from exile before Sunday's vote in a move the United States and other Western donors fear could distract voters from the Manigat-Martelly contest.
(Additional reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva, Editing by John Whitesides)
    By Pascal Fletcher

Why does US fear Aristide' s return in Haiti ?

   SUCCESSIVE administrations in Washington have demonstrated an obsession with the presence in Haiti of Jean Bertrand Aristide — whether or not he is functioning as president of that Caribbean nation that languishes in a state of permanent crisis.

Latest example is the unsolicited advice publicly given by the Hillary Clinton-led US State Department that the former popular Roman Catholic priest of the poor, turned politician, should not return to his homeland before this coming Sunday's scheduled second round presidential run-off.

This is quite baffling. What gives the government of President Barack Obama the right — legal or moral — to publicly and presumably privately as well, request him to delay his planned imminent return to his homeland from exile in South Africa?      

Twice elected to the presidency and twice ousted from power in mid-term, with the US Central Intelligence Agency as an accomplice with corrupt Haitian political and military leaders, Aristide was restored to power in 1994, with the use of military force by President Bill Clinton, who has continued to distinguish himself as a stout "friend'' of the people of Haiti.

By 2004, amid orchestrated domestic political turmoil, the Washington administration of President George W Bush was to play a leading role, along with France, in ousting President Aristide from power, against the protestations from the governments of the Caribbean community of which Haiti is a member state.

Aristide was flown into exile on a US military aircraft and following a brief period of political asylum in Jamaica, South Africa became the place of choice for his almost seven years in exile.

When the unprecedented earthquake-triggered devastation of Haiti occurred in January last year, Aristide was lamenting his absence from Haiti and has shown an interest to be back among "my fellow Haitians".

Following the surprise return to the country of ex-dictator Jean Claude Duvalier, Aristide applied for a new Haitian passport and signalled plans to return soon. However, once the passport was delivered he started to experience unexplained complications in official arrangements, including security, to return home.

He felt obliged that he had no interest in becoming involved in the  ongoing political squabbles over the controversial outcome of last November's parliamentary elections which led to violent demonstrations and a necessary second round presidential run-off in the face of documented examples of electoral rigging

Early last month, then US State Department spokesman, Philip Crowley, was to go public with a claim that Aristide's return to Haiti before the second round presidential run-off "would be an unfortunate distraction and the two participating candidates (Mirlande Manigat and Michel Martelly) should be the focus at this time…"

That contention provoked an immediate protest demonstration from Haitians, including militant activists of Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas  party, who cried "no Aristide, no second round (election)…"

As if bent on pursuing a course of action to deter Aristide — a former legitimate Haitian president forced out of office by the US and allies like France — from returning home before this Sunday's run-off presidential pol — a new State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, has emerged to sound a warning with an even more disturbing overtone.

For Toner, Aristide's return before Sunday's decisive vote, "can only be seen as a conscious choice to impact Haiti's elections", and that Washington was also seeking the cooperation of the South African government to persuade the former president from returning before the March 20 poll.

Why this fear of Aristide's presence at this time?

For seven years Aristide has been in exile. During that period no credible information was provided by either governments in Port-au-Prince or administrations in Washington (Republican or Democrat), that he has a political agenda to disturb the peace (sic) in Haiti, affect the conduct of the presidential run-off and create more problems for that poor nation of endless miseries.

The governments of Caricom should speak, unequivocally, in one voice, on the fundamental right of the former president of Haiti to return to his homeland, whenever he so determines, and that this should not be left to the whims and fancies of a foreign government, in this case one, ironically, headed by President Barack Obama.

It is quite understandable for the Joint Organisation of American States (OAS) and Caricom Mission  in Haiti to have made their public appeal on Monday for a peaceful atmosphere to prevail for Sunday's final presidential run-off, and to have again denounced the political violence that had marred the first-round campaign of last November's parliamentary and presidential poll.

Nevertheless, it is quite strange that Caricom has refrained from commenting on the repeated public calls for Aristide to stay away from Haiti until after Sunday's second round run-off between the 70-year-old former first lady Manigat and 50-year-old pop singer Martelly.

For that matter, why the silence of outgoing Haitian President Rene Preval himself?

Having agreed to Aristide being given the new passport he required, and the former dictator Jean Claude Duvalier, is in Haiti and soon to face court trials for crimes committed, why not a statement of clarification on Aristide's right to return to his homeland, whenever he chooses?

By
Rickey Singh
Story Created:
           Mar 16, 2011 at 12:42 AM ECT 
Story Updated:
Mar 16, 2011 at 12:42 AM ECT

Hillary Clinton won't serve a second term as secretary of State

Posted by Amy Davidson
“No,” “No,” “No,” “No”: those were Hillary Clinton’s full answers to four questions from Wolf Blitzer. He had asked, “If the president is reelected, do you want to serve a second term as secretary of state?” And then, after the first no, if she’d like to be Secretary of Defense, Vice-President, or President of the United States. (How about a ballerina, a firefighter, or an astronaut?) She had a longer response when he asked her why not, though it wasn’t very responsive—it was mostly about how much fun it had been to be Secretary of State. And though she said, after a followup, that she was “moving on” from thoughts of the Presidency, she also used the slightly avoidant “no intention or any idea even of running again.” And where would she get an idea like that?
There was another, questionable no from Clinton today, this one concerning the case of Raymond Davis. “The United States did not pay any compensation,” Clinton said, according to Reuters. Well, but someone did: about two million three hundred thousand dollars to the families of two men Davis shot and killed on the streets of Lahore in what he claimed was self defense, and a third who was killed when a car Davis called for from our consulate slammed through traffic. (I’ve written about Davis, and about the Times’s strange explanation of its decision not to report on his connections to the C.I.A.) Maybe Clinton’s denial is a matter of verb tenses—“did not pay,” as opposed to “is not paying.” (“We expect to receive a bill,” an American official told the Washington Post.) Our government had been trying to assert diplomatic immunity on Davis’s behalf, enraging many people in Pakistan. Pakistani law allows judges to issue a pardon, however, if the family of a victim attests that it has received compensation, and is satisfied. (The provision has its basis in Sharia law; Eric Lach, at TPM, found some irony there.) That is what happened today. Davis is free, Pakistan put its judicial machinery through some formal motions, and it never got to the point where the Pakistani courts had to make a call on the diplomatic-immunity question. But you can’t really call it elegant. There were protests in Lahore when the news came out, and it leaves untouched the larger questions of impunity and covert operations in Pakistan. There are also questions about the pressure the families had on them to settle. A lawyer who had been representing them said that he was held in a room at the courthouse for a number of hours and not allowed to talk to them while the deal was being struck. One of the relatives who won’t be sharing the money is the eighteen-year-old widow of one of the dead men; she is dead, too, now, after killing herself by swallowing rat poison. Was there justice for her? Maybe Hillary Clinton has an answer.

Nicole Scherzinger said solo album was born out of Haiti earthquake

Singer Nicole Scherzinger said her new album Killer Love was born out of the Haiti earthquake.The 32-year-old met producer Red One when they recorded the Haiti earthquake charity song last year and he helped her on her new solo project.She said to UK newspaper Daily Star: 'The one good thing to come from that tragedy was my music. It was a moving experience recording We Are The World for Haiti and I got to work with Red One, which was beautiful.

'That's when I said: 'I want to do this album with you and what I have in mind is an album that's as big and explosive as a live show.''