23395: Esser: Re: 23371: Stockdale: Re: 23366: Esser: Re: 23328 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

It doesn't help the grieving people of Gonaives to perpetuate myths
about pathogens in cadavers (see also the article below). While it
might have been convenient for the Latortue puppet regime to dispose
of the bodies quickly and cost effective, the long term consequences
for the survivors are drastic.

Imagine you are a person who lost all relatives in the flood and were
not allowed to properly bury the deceased.

Burials in Haiti, as in other regions of the world, are a vital
cultural rite to help the survivors to cope with the loss. By not
having a grave to visit the grief will be compounded. To speak of
risks to mortuary workers in Gonaives is silly! How many of the dead
wound actually up in a morgue? Since Latortue managed to destroy all
that was left of functioning authorities in Gonaives by handing the
reigns to violent criminals, there has not been any kind
infrastructure that could have been deployed to deal with the flood.

Since pathogens do not survive over long periods in a deceased host,
what could be the reason for Latortues cruel actions? For sure
incompetence plays a role; his administration has not shown any
ability to handle the crises that swept over Haiti since Aristide's
involuntary removal from office. It seems part of his set of - why do
they have to eat rice? - policies, that show an utter contempt for
the suffering of the Haitian masses. No wonder that he has absolutely
no popular support and holds his fragile grip on power through the
violence perpetrated by his criminal comrades in arms, the Haitian
police and last not least the firepower of the UN troops.

The bulldozing of the bodies was one way to ensure that it doesn't
become to obvious that the U.S. installed government destroyed the
civil authorities in town.



THE CLAIM: Corpses can start epidemic after a natural disaster

Anahad O'Connor
New York Times News Service
Oct. 12, 2004

THE FACTS: The hurricanes that swept through the Caribbean and the
southeastern United States last month, claiming the lives of
thousands of people, have revived a widespread health myth.

After natural disasters that inflict enormous casualties, fears arise
that corpses might set off an epidemic. Local health officials then
bury remains without identifying them first, a drastic measure that
only compounds grief for the victims' relatives. Experts say this
happened after Hurricane Jeanne killed 2,000 people in Haiti last
month and after major earthquakes shook Turkey in 2003 and El
Salvador in 2001.

Oliver Morgan, a researcher who published a study on the phenomenon
in the Pan American Journal of Public Health this year, said that
large-scale disasters and outbreaks of infectious diseases have
sometimes occurred together by coincidence, leading many people to
suspect that the corpses were to blame.

But only bodies that are infected with a disease can spread it.
Disaster victims pose little threat to the living, because they have
usually died from trauma, not infections.

A contagious disease that is present before death can be transmitted
to people handling the cadaver for roughly a couple of days,
depending on the pathogen. Mortuary and emergency workers are at
greatest risk, though the danger decreases if protective gloves,
gowns and masks are worn.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The risk of corpses causing an epidemic after a
natural disaster is negligible.
.