Cholera: The Epidemic Power of Vibrio cholerae

By Jeremy Akers, Danny Mays, Marc Siegel, MD, Visiting Focus Bloggers  This is the first in a series of posts on cholera and its impact on Haiti. The first post is a discussion of the disease itself, and serves as an examination of medical and epidemiological factors that enabled cholera to be carried by Nepalese…

The Finger of Blame for Haiti’s Environmental Degradation

By Meghan Pierce, Undergraduate Research Assistant I visited the Library of Congress last Tuesday to listen to a lecture by Dr. Jean-Francois Mouhot, a post-doctoral research fellow based at Georgetown, who is currently conducting a three-year research project on the Environmental History of Saint-Domingue / Haiti (1492-today). Dr. Mouhot began his talk by displaying a picture of…

On the Role of History and Social Science in Policy

By Kiran Jayaram, Visiting Focus Blogger  Five days after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, I smuggled myself onto a bus chartered by the Dominican government, and for the next two weeks, I assisted the relief efforts in Haiti by working with the Cruz Roja Dominicana (CRD).  Indeed, the Dominican government and non-state actors in the Dominican…

The Invisible Walls of Aid

By Scott Freeman, Visiting Scholar In order to prepare students for the aid industry, graduate and undergraduate institutions have designed degrees and concentrations in international development. Focusing on thinking critically about policy and procedure, students are ostensibly prepared so that previous errors will not be repeated again. But once one is ‘in’ the industry, is…

Haiti Moves a Step Closer toward Eradicating Elephantiasis

Reposted from NPR Global Health By Jason Beaubien Haiti has finally carried out a nationwide campaign to get rid of the parasitic worms that cause elephantiasis. Haiti has waged other campaigns against the condition, characterized by severe disfiguration of the legs and arms. But until now, it has never managed to adequately reach residents of…

Dr. Paul Farmer: Communities Should Lead Problem-Solving in Haiti

Democracy NOW! recently hosted Dr. Paul Farmer to discuss his work in Rwanda, Haiti and his latest book, To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation. Farmer decided to compile a collection of commencement addresses he has delivered to graduating college students over the past decade, through which he encourages them to…

The Present State of Haitian Fertility and the International Response

By Meghan Pierce, Undergraduate Research Assistant The right of the individual to decide how many children to have and when to have them has consistently been the guiding principle in international reproductive health standards, according to the World Health Organization.  Since 2010, Haiti’s rising annual birth rate has been increasingly referred to as a “fertility…

UN Anti-Cholera Plan in Haiti ‘Failing’

Re-posted from BBC News Latin America and the Caribbean By Mark Doyle, BBC International Development Correspondent May 29, 2013 UN efforts to tackle cholera in Haiti are “almost non-existent”, a charity says, as the world body faces court action for inadvertently starting a cholera epidemic in the country. Late last year, the UN launched a…

Travel to Haiti Becoming More Competitive

Source: The Miami Herald. PORT-AU-PRINCE — Traveling to Haiti just got a bit more competitive. JetBlue Airways, the low-cost carrier that has become a major player in the South Florida and Caribbean market, said Thursday it plans to begin offering daily nonstop service to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from New York and Fort-Lauderdale-Hollywood as early as December. The…

Images and “Saving”

By Scott Freeman, Visiting Scholar As an anthropologist, and one that focuses on Haiti, it is imperative to think and reflect on representation: how we represent those we work with, and to what end. These representations are not some sort of post-modern exercise in self absorption (though in academia, anything can become an exercise of self…