As a third-world country, Haiti is definitely one of the few countries that is at high risk with obtaining an infectious disease. Their health is dependent on how much access they have to education, employment, and welfare. They do not have the proper equipment to live a normal life. Haiti has a population of 10 million people, but lack the resources to sustain a proper lifestyle due to lack of healthcare. 1 out of 4000 people in Haiti become doctors and this leads to a shortage of doctors which hinders healthcare development (Follo, 2012). A large portion of the population can’t afford to buy basic necessities, such as food and water due to 59% of the population being under the poverty level and live on $2.00 a day, while 24.7% are undergoing …show more content…
Cholera is a dangerous infectious disease that has a potential to kill many citizens. It is a diarrheal illness spread by contaminated food and water (Mayo Clinic, 2016). During the 19th century, people thought the disease was transmitted by a “miasma” or also known as bad air. It has been studied that the disease is caused by a bacterium called “vibrio cholera” (Lippi, 2013). During the rainy season, Haiti experiences with flash flood, therefore contaminating the sewages. With the sewages being flooded, bacteria will roam around the air; therefore, getting people sick. As quickly as two hours, the bacterium in the water could turn into cholera and so this could potentially because an explosive pattern of outbreaks (Daniel, 2016). Approximately, every year 3 to 5 million people around the world are infected with the disease and in 2015, 172,454 cases of cholera was reported, which 41% were from Africa and 37% from Americans which happened after the outbreak started in Haiti at the end of October 2010 (WHO, 2016). Cholera can be preventable with simple guidelines, precautions, and correct care. Simple measures such as drinking and using safe water, washing your hands often, cooking food to the correct temperature, and cleaning up around you. Cholera has exploded over the years and has caused devastation across the world. Cholera has always been a preventable disease and while developing countries might have the available health care treatment, it is possible to reduce the amount of cases happening here in
Paul Farmer was born in Massachusetts in 1959, went to Harvard Medical School, became a doctor, and ended up living and working in Haiti. He co-founded an organization in 1987 called Partners in Health (PIH). The philosophy behind the organization is that everyone, no matter who or where has a right to health care. Paul Farmer and PIH have already made amazing progress in Haiti, Peru, and several other countries, helping people get the care they need. PIH’s website lists a detailed history of they and Farmer’s work in Haiti. When Paul Farmer first came to Cange, Haiti as a medical student in 1983, the place was in shambles. In 1956, a dam was built on the Artibonite River, flooding the village and forcing the residents to move up into the hills. Many of these displaced villagers were still essentially homeless after nearly thirty years, and had little access to quality health care. With the founding of the Zanmi Lasante clinic later in 1983, Farmer and his friend Ophelia Dahl set the people of Cange on the road to recovery by providing access to doctors, medicine, and emergency care, all completely free. (“Partners”) One of Farmer’s focuses was on tuberculosis (TB) and has had much success on this front. Through new studies and methods such as active case finding and community health workers, as well as his work with multidrug-resistant TB, Paul Farmer has revolutionized treatment of tuberculosis in Haiti and around the world.
The outburst spread of diseases in a population causes people to panic and become hopeless. The main reason diseases spread is due to unsanitary living styles. Also when a disease first begins, it is really hard to find a cure right away. A very deadly, infectious disease known as Typhus spread during the Holocaust. Typhus is caused by rickettsia and is spread by lice and flees.
Haiti is a prime example of how human needs in one area of the world are interdependent with social conditions elsewhere in the world. Haiti, for most of its history has been overwhelmed with economic mismanage and political violence. While in Haiti Dr. Farmer discovers that his patients live in poverty, filth, pain and famine. Many of the Haitian residents will die young due to diseases or violence, especially when their own doctors are inexperienced and practice medicine in less than savory clinics. How do you deliver quality healthcare to a destitute area of the world when its residence, although may be cured of their disease, will return to no clean running water, an extreme lack of quality food and basic necessitates that majority of us take for granted, no safe shelters from disease carrying insects, and no means to protect themselves from airborne and sexually transmitted diseases. Returning to the same conditions that caused the diseases in the first place, without a change in the environment, can be viewed as a never ending battle.
A.1 Concerning John Barnes, how was cholera communicated? What were the modes of disease transmission? What is the correct epidemiological term for the modes of transmission that were identified?
Haiti is drenched in poverty, corruption, and lack of education. Due to these aspects Haiti is “the least developed country in the western hemisphere”. With only one-third of suitable land...
Cholera is a water-borne disease caused by the spreading of toxins throughout the intestines by the Vibrio Cholerae bacterium. Bad hygiene and other unsanitary conditions such as contamination of food and water can result in this unpleasant infection. As stated in the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, “contamination starts when a person infected with cholera steps into a community water supply.” Cholera is more common in places with poor cleanliness and insufficient water treatment. These locations include environments consisting of brackish rivers and coastal waters such as an underdeveloped country like Africa. Cholera can affect anyone but is usually targeted at younger ch...
The healthcare of the poor in the US can provide information that can be useful in Haiti’s public health crisis. In specific, the inequalities and poverty that the poor have to face in the US can provide framework for Haiti’s public health crisis. Farmer discusses how medical treatment can be expensive for poor Americans, especially since there have been numerous advances in biomedicine that make treatment quite expensive. If poor Americans cannot afford access to treatment, then it is nearly impossible for Haitians to be able to experience quality care either. In the US, tuberculosis is common in homeless shelters and in prison, which tend to be crowded areas. In Haiti, tuberculosis is also common mainly because families tend to live together and interact with each other frequently (e.g., Annette Jean and her family). Since there are commonalities in both the US and Haiti, Haiti’s health crisis may be solved by applying strategies that allow the US poor to access quality healthcare. The US has the money to try different strategies, while Haiti does
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
The Dominic Republic currently has a capable and sufficient healthcare system for their citizens. However, the cost of healthcare across the board along with a moral obligation to assist Haitians access to care can be improved. I will address our tier healthcare system to assure access is available to all people on a basic level.
www.msh.org - Management Sciences for Health - Republic of Haiti. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2010, from http://www.msh.org/global-presence/latin-america-and-the-caribbean/Haiti.cfm
Haiti is home to about 9.8 million people. Two million people live in Port-au-Prince, which is not only the most populated city, it is also the capital. The city was established in 1749 and did not grow very rapidly because of earthquakes. Half of the nation’s capital lives in poverty. They have no or rarely any access to safe drinking water or electricity and there is hardly any sanitation. Out of all the Americas, the two largest slums are right in this city. The other half of the city lives in an urban area. It has attractions for tourists and has many hotels. Port-au-Prince also has many industries. A few of these include textile, clothing, footwear, food, and consumer goods. Port-au-Prince, being the most populated city in Haiti, also holds a lo...
Cholera was primitively native to the Indian subcontinent primarily around the Ganges river. The trade routes spread the disease to Russia, and then to Western Europe. During the Irish immigration period it was spread to North America. Cholera is no longer considered a critical health threat in North America and Europe due to filtering and chlorination of water supplies.However, it still affects developing countries and especially the children inhabiting them. (Balakrishnan/ 2008)
Preventing diseases is every countries’ responsibility, whether they are poor or rich. Poor countries lack the knowledge and the money to gain, and expand medical resources. Therefore, many people are not been able to be cured. For wealthy countries, diseases are mutating at incredible speeds. Patients are dying because drug companies do not have enough data to produce vaccines to cure patients. When developed countries help poor countries to cure their people, the developed countries could help underdeveloped countries. Since developed countries can provide greater medical resources to poor countries, people living in the poor countries could be cured. As for the developed countries, they can collect samples from the patients so that the drug companies can produce new vaccines for new diseases. When trying to cure diseases, developed countries and poor countries would have mu...
People from many developing countries are suffering from the scarcity of clean water, while the rest of the country simply take for granted. Habitants of rural poor communities such as Sub-Saharan Africa, are living in a water stressed environment. Residents of these communities have to walk miles at time just to gather water from streams and ponds, even though the water source may contain water-borne disease that can make them very sick. In the rural places that don’t have access to safe clean water, it is very difficult to prevent the spread of viruses. The consumption of contaminated water can be dangerous for health reasons and several people have passed away from these water-borne diseases. Some of these diseases include Cholera, Typhoid, Dysentery, Giardiasis, and Malaria. These unfortunate diseases are currently the cause of numerous deaths, especially in small children. The availability of clean water can prevent many problems in low income communities. The available resources for clean water are very rare, so these water sources need to pass through a process of water sanitation in order to just be sustainable to drink, “The world’s surface is made up of approximately 80% water, which is an indestructible substance. Of this water approximately 97% is salt water, 2% frozen in glaciers, and only 1% is available for drinking water supply using traditional treatment methods” (Thornton). Therefore, properly treated or disinfected
HIV does not only affect the well-being of individuals, it has large impacts on households, communities and even nations as a whole. Peer discussions and personal research has also made me realize that some of the countries suffering from this HIV epidemic also rather unfortunately suffer from other infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, relative poverty and economic stagnation. Despite these setbacks, new inte...