21994: (Hermantin)Miami New Times-Starving children don't respond to military firepower (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Originally published by Miami New Times May 20, 2004
©2004 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.

What Haiti Teaches
Starving children don't respond to military firepower
BY TRISTRAM KORTEN

Dr. Michael Dinerman

More than 60 percent of the children in the remote mountainous region of
Thomonde suffer some degree of malnutrition




This past February the rebellion in Haiti gripped the world. Journalists
from Spain, England, and Japan, not to mention a battalion of American media
might -- the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, NPR, and more --
camped out at swank Port-au-Prince hotels like the Montana, El Rancho, and
the Villa Creole (the only ones with reliable Internet connections), drawn
largely by the startling images of gunmen run amok in a godforsaken land
just a 90-minute plane ride from our shores. Ultimately President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced to flee the country.

And then, as quickly as they descended, the journalists up and left, except
for the Associated Press, which got busy setting up a permanent bureau
there.

It is Haiti's misshapen luck that even when a civil war breaks out,
perversely bringing needed attention to the perennially suffering nation,
something else comes along to erase it from the international community's
consciousness -- namely, a bombed-out train in Madrid, followed by
rocket-toting rebels in Fallujah.

It is Haiti's lot, like mother Africa's, to suffer in silence.

Writ large, this also reflects America's foreign policy toward Haiti: a
compressed orgy of intervention (1994's "immaculate invasion," to steal the
title from Bob Shacochis's book, in which 20,000 American troops descended
to restore Aristide to the National Palace after a coup) followed by long
stretches of neglect. Conventional thinking holds that the place just isn't
important enough to warrant sustained attention -- it has no resources or
money to speak of, and its offshore location keeps it somewhat isolated.

But it could be argued that Haiti's strategic importance to the U.S. is in
reverse relief. If stability doesn't take root there, Haiti could be the
Caribbean Afghanistan, a lawless state that provides haven to an array of
outlaws from drug dealers to, potentially, terrorists. We ignore her at our
own peril.

Those are fine arguments if you need them. In the end, though, the only
justification required is that the place suffers amid poverty unequaled in
this hemisphere, and arguably beyond.

Ellen Powers has just returned from an April trip to Haiti. She is the
executive director of Project Medishare, a healthcare program founded in
1995 by two University of Miami doctors, Barth Green and Arthur Fournier,
and funded primarily through the Green Family Foundation with the help of
other nonprofits. Medishare, headquartered on NE Second Avenue in Little
Haiti, maintains a clinic in Thomonde (which is the equivalent of a county),
nestled in the remote mountainous region known as the Central Plateau (the
equivalent of a state).

This might possibly be the most unfortunate place in a thoroughly luckless
land. It suffers a child-mortality rate of 187 infants per 1000, versus 138
per 1000 for the rest of Haiti, and has a ten percent higher rate of child
retardation. By contrast the U.S. infant-mortality rate is 8 per 1000.

Only one dusty track leads from Port-au-Prince through the mountains to the
town of Thomonde and its outlying villages, which together have a population
of about 35,000. That "road" is so rough and strewn with so many sharp rocks
that flat tires are inevitable. But at least vehicles can traverse it. The
villages outside of Thomonde are accessible only by foot, horse, or
motorcycle. To get basic healthcare information and services out there,
Medishare trains some of the villagers to detect signs and symptoms of
sicknesses such as malnourishment and dehydration. These workers are also
trained to dispense desperately needed vaccinations against tuberculosis,
diphtheria, polio, and measles.

In November 2003, Medishare's workers completed a health census of
Thomonde's residents and found that 63 percent of the children up to age
five were suffering some level of malnutrition. Apart from stunted growth,
this can lead to mental retardation. Severe malnutrition leads to that
pathetic state in which children have distended bellies and orange hair. It
is the last stop before death.

Medishare's census was taken before violence closed the ports, airport,
roads, and schools, and led to the suspension of salaries for everyone from
teachers to police officers. It also sent gas prices skyrocketing.
Essentially Thomonde was cut off from the world for a couple of months.
Today basic government services are more or less running again, but
residents of the Central Plateau barely sustain themselves in the best of
times. Even a slight disruption creates "a crisis within a crisis," as
program manager Marie Chery told Powers.

Medishare workers are currently updating their census, and Powers does not
expect the news to be good. "The things children are dying from there are
the things we got rid of or controlled a long time ago," she says. "Things
like diarrhea."




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Thomonde is primarily agricultural. Villagers wield medieval-era hoes to
plant fields of cassava, plantains, rice, and beans, providing them with a
diet that consists almost entirely of starch, with the occasional bit of
goat meat. They eat very little fruit and few green vegetables. What greens
they do eat regularly, like legumes, are traditionally boiled, which tends
to wash out the vitamins. "The only time they get enough Vitamin A is during
the mango season," Powers explains. Vitamin A is essential for growing
children; without it their eyesight is underdeveloped. In extreme cases they
go blind.

In June Powers will return with some surgeons and a team of volunteer
medical students from UM for a healthcare blitz in the region they call a
"health fair." The surgeons will go to the provincial capital of Hinche.

The continuing crisis in Haiti offers lessons for the conflicts in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The U.S. cannot simply charge into a country with guns blazing,
then leave a few months later and expect life there to proceed normally. A
long-term commitment is required. That's a conclusion many have reached, a
conclusion recently supported with extensive research published by the San
Antonio Express-News.

Powers doesn't need a newspaper to tell her that. "Haiti has been suffering
forever," she says. "The last time we as a country went there, it was
short-term. Haiti needs more than three or four months of intervention. And
they deserve it -- they're one of our closest neighbors."

Not surprisingly, she says what the place needs most is money. Haiti is full
of nonprofit organizations, and there are thousands of competent Haitians
who can keep programs running. But now U.S. aid is going to Iraq, which
threatens to become a black hole for spending. Meanwhile Haiti is pushed to
the back of our minds.

At least until they begin killing people in the streets -- again.

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