Recently the UN was sued for ‘bringing Cholera to Haiti’ causing an outbreak that killed thousands. While there are many aspects of this disturbing piece of information we can argue and debate upon, the one that comes to the fore is the lack of adequate water sanitization policies in developing countries. "The children who have no clean water to drink, the women who fear for their safety, the young people who have no chance to receive a decent education have a right to better, and we have a responsibility to do better. All people have the right to safe drinking water, sanitation, shelter and basic services” Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General (2010). Thus this recent cholera outbreak in Haiti highlights the failure of the UN to follow through on their claims and policies.
This is not a one-off case but one in a string of such similar cases in the world. In 1991, Bangladesh had to endure a cholera outbreak due to negligence on the part of the government’s cholera surveillance program that did not recognize rural areas (Siddique, 1992). The South African government’s new policy of privatizing water projects led to increased number of cases of cholera (Pauw, 2003). In 2008, Zimbabwe suffered a cholera outbreak due to government malfeasance. President Robert Mugabe’s government swindled money from the Zimbabwean water treatment plants leading to increased cholera rates and subsequent deaths (Colwell, 2013).
Historically, cholera was deemed to be the “poor man’s plague” in the 19th century as it only seemed to affect the people who lived in extreme poverty in rural areas. In his book “The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832,1849, and 1866 ” author Charles Rosenberg stated that in 1832, cholera was considered to be a part of ‘God’...
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...death- how a experiment caused riots and a cholera epidemic. International Journal of health Services, 33.
Rosenberg, C. E. (1987). The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832,1849, and 1866. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Siddique, A. K. (1992). Cholera Epidemics in Bangladesh: 1985-1991. Journal of Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, 10(2), 79.
The Task Force for Global Health. (2013). Coalition for Cholera Prevention and Control (CCPC). Retrieved from http://www.taskforce.org/our-work/projects/coalition-cholera-prevention-and-control-ccpc
UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. (2002). General Comment No.15. The right to water. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/human_right_to_water.shtml
United Nations Development Programme. (2006). Human Development Report 2006.Beyond scarcity: power, poverty and the global water crisis.
The book, The Ghost Map, tells the story of the cholera outbreak that took place in England during the medieval era. During this time, London became popular, causing it to become one of the most populous urban cities in England. However, it suffered from overcrowding, a large lower class, and little health regulations. As a result, living conditions and water supply were not the cleanest, and many died from the disease cholera. Though this epidemic led to many deaths/illnesses during it’s time, it has proven to be helpful and important to public health today. Some public health advancements that have occurred as a result include healthier, cleaner, and longer lives lived.
in the Time of Cholera was unveiled to the anxious world. It was highly received,
Lapaire, Pierre J. "The Plague: Overview." Reference Guide to World Literature. Ed. Lesley Henderson. 2nd ed. New York: St. James Press, 1995. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Mar. 2011.
Hypothesis about cause and spread: According to Snow, the cause of the disease was due to some sort of contact between the healthy and sick. “It is quite impossible that even a tenth part of these cases of consecutive illness could have followed each other by coincidence without being connected as caused and effect” (PG .244) Snow believed that once cholera was passed to the healthy, the disease would multiply and cause them in fall ill. The disease was found to be spread through unsafe water and unwashed clothing/bedding from the infected.
Mary Lowth, “Plagues, pestilence and pandemics: Deadly diseases and humanity,” Practice Nurse, 16, (2012): 42-46
Unlike the first cholera pandemic in 1817, the second one also affected countries in Europe and North America in addition to Asia. Of the seven total cholera pandemics, many consider this one the greatest of the 19th century. Cholera caused more deaths, more quickly than any other epidemic disease of the 1800s. It is an infectious disease that causes severe diarrhea that can lead to dehydration and death if untreated. Eating food or drinking water contaminated with a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae causes cholera. After the first pandemic had diminished throughout Asia by1824, the disease began spreading again from Bengal in 1826. It began with outbreaks in the Ganges River of Bengal and quickly spread throughout most of India. It had moved into Afghanistan and Persia by 1829 and surfaced in Russia in August of that year. From Russia, the disease travelled to Poland and eventually Hungary, Germany, Berlin, England, Scotland, and Wales. While the disease was penetrating most of Europe, it had also reached areas in Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula by 1831. Thousands of Muslim pilgrims from Mecca died from the disease and carried it into Palestine, Syria, and Egypt that year. Mecca continued to be infected by cholera until about 1912. The disease also reached Portugal in 1833, from an English ship that docked in Portugal. Cholera’s path east of India remains
Murphy, Jim. An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic 1793. New York, New York: Clariton Book, 2003. Print.
4. United Nations Development Programme, U.N. Human Development Report 2006, Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty, and the Global Water Crisis, web. 6 Dec. 2009 http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr2006_english_summary.pdf
This book follows an esteemed doctor and a local clergyman who, together, are the heart of an investigation to solve the mystery of the cholera epidemic. In 1854 London was ravaged by a terrible outbreak of cholera, where within the span of mere weeks over five hundred people in the Soho district died. London, at the time, was a city of around two and a half million people, all crammed into a small area with no system for sewage removal. With overflowing cesspools, improper drainage of all the human and animal waste, and no system for guaranteed clean water, the people of London were in a bad state. They were essentially dumping all of their feces into their drinking water supply, a perfect environment for cholera to thrive.
Swenson, Robert. “Plagues, History, and AIDS.” American Scholar 57.2 (1988): 183-200. Academic Journal. Web. 2 Dec. 2013.
Measures to expand and improve public delivery systems of drinking water, contributing to a reduction in morbidity and mortality associated with enteric diseases, because these diseases are associated directly or indirectly with providing substandard water or poor provision water. Currently, 1,400 million people lack access to safe drinking water and nearly 4,000 billion lack adequate sanitation. According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), 80% of diseases are transmitted through contaminated water.
When examining diseases and how they affect a community, it is important for medical anthropologists to use a biological or epidemiological approach to gather information about the disease or pathogen behind the epidemic. An epidemiological approach “views disease in ecological term(s) as the interaction between a pathogen(s) and its host(s), as this interaction is shaped by the conditions of a specific environment(s)” (Joralemon 2010:33). In using this approach, information gathered about the genetics of the disease help determine how it spreads, what the rate of transmission is, the ways it affects the body as well as ways to prevent the spread and heal an infected person. This approach gathers very practical and scientific information that needs to be deciphered in terms of the community. When looking at the cholera epidemics in South America in the early 1990s, it was important for world leaders to know how the disease was spreading, how fast it was spreading and how it affected the body. The strengths to using the biological/epidemiological approach are that the government is able to pinpoint sources of contamination and identify disease pathogens. However, a limitation to this approach is that it does not take into consideration the cultural, ec...
Robert May. “Plagues and People.” IUBMB Life. Vol. 58 Issue 3 (2006). . 120. http://login.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=20856641&site=ehost-live.
"Water Crisis." World Water Council. 7th World Water Council, 2012. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/library/archives/water-crisis/