{"id":158105,"date":"2020-04-13T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=158105"},"modified":"2020-04-11T12:01:14","modified_gmt":"2020-04-11T11:01:14","slug":"haiti-on-the-precipice-as-coronavirus-and-us-imposed-leadership-take-their-toll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/04\/haiti-on-the-precipice-as-coronavirus-and-us-imposed-leadership-take-their-toll\/","title":{"rendered":"Haiti on the Precipice as Coronavirus and US-Imposed Leadership Take Their Toll"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Haiti\u2019s widely despised, US-backed government officially promotes social distancing to suppress Covid-19, the stark reality is that most of the population is likely heading toward herd immunity, where many must get infected in the street rather than die by hunger at home.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Peoples Dispatch<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Mar 2020 – <\/em>Haitian President Jovenel Mo\u00efse announced on March 19 that two citizens<\/a> in Haiti had tested positive for Covid-19, known popularly simply as the coronavirus. The government has closed Haiti\u2019s border, ports, and airports to the movement of people but kept supply chains open. Only a small number of tests<\/a> have been administered, and there are rising fears that a health catastrophe will unfold over the coming weeks and months.<\/p>\n

News and commentaries inside the country spread quickly over WhatsApp and local media. Under mounting stress, many know they are wholly unprepared for a pandemic that has also arrived in other Caribbean countries, including the neighboring Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n

The latest reports indicate that 859 people have tested positive<\/a> in the Dominican Republic, with 39 deaths already. One of the country\u2019s main hospitals in the second largest city, Santiago de los Caballeros, reportedly no longer has beds available.<\/p>\n

Many families in Haiti have relatives residing in the Dominican Republic and receive updates regularly. The virus appears to have initially been brought to Haiti through Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince. Since the first two cases, the official number rose to 15 by March 30, although that figure is surely an undercount. Dozens have been placed under quarantine.<\/p>\n

Haiti now faces a looming pandemic with an almost non-existent public healthcare system, and with a dysfunctional political system rooted in neocolonial intervention.<\/p>\n

The Caribbean region has endured four centuries of slavery and colonialism and a fifth century of economic dependence. Accelerating globalization and technological developments have brought profound change<\/a> to the region over the past 20 years, including no-cost digital communications, hi-tech remittance networks, low-cost mass travel and tourism, and new banking and financial arrangements. But it has also brought soaring inequality and climate shocks, mainly in the form of hurricanes and rising sea-levels.<\/p>\n

Globalization and automation have caused billions of people to be cast into capitalism\u2019s surplus population. Under this system\u2019s relentless logic, vast portions of the world\u2019s people, even entire countries like Haiti, are condemned to rampant crime, unemployment, and inflation, alongside disintegrating infrastructure and government services. It sinks destructively into the social fabric of society.<\/p>\n

To preserve social order and the neoliberal conception of \u201cgood governance,\u201d Western institutions resort to severe austerity measures and military intervention<\/a>, further debilitating the neo-colony whose economic life-blood is being sucked out to enrich the transnational bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n

This is the recipe that rendered Haiti completely unprepared for the Coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n

The stark reality of Haiti<\/h3>\n

Unemployment in Haiti is already sky-high. With 6 million of Haiti\u2019s 11 million citizens living below the poverty line of $2.41 a day, according to the World Bank<\/a>, most will face a grueling dilemma of how to feed themselves and their families while avoiding virus infection.<\/p>\n

Dr. John A. Carroll, who has worked in clinics, hospitals, and orphanages in Haiti since 1995, explained, \u201cThere is no treatment in Haiti that will be accessible by the masses. But there is quarantine to stop transmission. But how do we isolate people in the Haitian slum where the population density is so high and people need to have human contact in order to survive?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe breadwinners in the house need to score some bread because they all need to eat,\u201d Carroll continued. \u201cAnd this family\u2019s neighbors next door don\u2019t have the time or abilities to help out because they have equally severe challenges surviving the slum also.\u201c<\/p>\n

While the Haitian government is officially promoting confinement and social distancing, the stark reality is that most of the population are likely heading toward collective \u201cherd immunity,\u201d where many must choose to get infected in the street rather than die by hunger at home. Some, like Carroll, think that this steep, as opposed to flattened, infection curve will result in fewer deaths.<\/p>\n

Building \u201cherd immunity\u201d is an approach that the UK government<\/a> actually suggested for its own people weeks ago, but quickly rejected as a result of a fierce public backlash. Instead, the British state has imposed \u201csocial distancing\u201d measures and \u2014 despite a right-wing government being in office \u2014 committed to pay the majority of the payroll costs of businesses whose workers stay home.<\/p>\n

On March 29, local medical experts interviewed on Radio Kiskeya<\/a>, one of the country\u2019s most important radio stations, suggested that up to 800,000 Haitians could perish from the virus. Large-scale foreign investment and monumental local efforts would need to be undertaken to avert such a catastrophe.<\/p>\n

The Grayzone spoke with Dr. Ernst No\u00ebl, of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy (FMP) in Port-au-Prince, who stated that the number of 800,000 is not an exaggeration. In his view, many people will likely die due to Coronavirus, and in larger numbers than those that perished in the 2010 earthquake.<\/p>\n

He added that large-scale foreign investment and monumental local efforts would need to be undertaken to soften the blow of the oncoming disaster.<\/p>\n

Teetering on the edge of a meltdown<\/h3>\n

It would be an understatement to say that Haiti\u2019s health-care system is ill-prepared for the looming catastrophe.<\/p>\n

According to Haiti\u2019s National Institute of Statistics, the country has only 911 doctors. A mere 4.4 percent of the national budget is allocated for national health, which translates to ill-equipped hospitals with woefully insufficient staff. State-run hospitals often face labor strikes, and some medical staff appear not to be showing up to work<\/a>, as they are lacking masks, gloves, and gowns and fear contracting the virus.<\/p>\n

According to Haiti\u2019s most read newspaper, Le Nouvelliste,<\/i> the country has only 130 ICU beds, and most of these are older models.<\/p>\n

Dr. Paul Farmer, a co-founder of the Boston-based health care organization Partners in Health, has suggested Haiti may actually have fewer than\u00a030 fully functioning ICU beds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile there are an estimated 64 ventilators<\/a> inside the country, though some are likely not working.<\/p>\n

Dr. Farmer<\/a> has pointed out how people living in the Global South face significantly more risk due to underdeveloped healthcare infrastructure:<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these mechanics of a hospital, we [in affluent nations] don\u2019t have to deal with them. The oxygen is piped right into every room. But the dread of responsibility for my coworkers in Haiti is that they have to worry: Where do we get the oxygen, the IV solutions, can we space the beds for intensive or supportive care in a way that doesn\u2019t infect the caregivers? And we\u2019ve exhausted a lot of supplies as health-care workers are more attentive to putting on gloves, changing gloves, gowning up. We\u2019re seeing real supply chain challenges.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Doctors assigned to the State University of Haiti (HUEH), the country\u2019s biggest medical facility, have reportedly barely escaped from a suspected Covid-19 outbreak. They had not received personal protection equipment, nor did they get the test kits prescribed for testing coronavirus patients. Even running water is lacking in some medical facilities.<\/p>\n

\n

#Haiti<\/a> has less than 130 ICU beds for a population of more than 10 million. A fast moving #Covid<\/a>-19 and a crumbling medical infrastructure are recipes for disaster. #coronavirus<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/RquC8yNHlb<\/a><\/p>\n

— ED (@EtantDupain) March 20, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n