Compelling new scientific evidence suggests United Nations peacekeepers have carried a virulent strain of cholera — a super bug — into the Western Hemisphere for the first time.
The vicious form of cholera has already killed 7,000 people in Haiti, where it surfaced in a remote village in October 2010. Leading researchers from Harvard Medical School and elsewhere told ABC News that, despite UN denials, there is now a mountain of evidence suggesting the strain originated in Nepal, and was carried to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers who came to Haiti to serve as UN peacekeepers after the earthquake that ravaged the country on Jan. 12, 2010 — two years ago today. Haiti had never seen a case of cholera until the arrival of the peacekeepers, who allegedly failed to maintain sanitary conditions at their base.
“What scares me is that the strain from South Asia has been recognized as more virulent, more capable of causing severe disease, and more transmissible,” said John Mekalanos, who chairs the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School. “These strains are nasty. So far there has been no secondary outbreak. But Haiti now represents a foothold for a particularly dangerous variety of this deadly disease.”
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ABC News has interviewed several top scientists involved in researching the origins of the cholera outbreak, and each expressed little doubt that the UN troop was responsible. The reason: A genetic analysis of the strain found in Haiti matches identically the one involved in an outbreak in Nepal in August and September of 2010; The Nepalese peacekeeping troops deployed for Haiti at precisely that time; Two weeks before the outbreak, Haitians had reported sanitary breakdowns at the Nepalese encampment set along a tributary to the Artibonite River, about 60 miles north of the capital Port Au Prince. The next month, the earliest cases of cholera surfaced in the same remote area, from Haitians who had been drinking and bathing in the river.
“The scientific debate on the origin of cholera in Haiti existed, but it has been resolved by the accumulation of evidence that unfortunately leave no doubt about the implication of the Nepalese contingent of the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti,” said French epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux, whose research on the outbreak was published by a U.S. Centers for Disease Control journal. With the likelihood that cholera will be part of the landscape in Haiti for decades to come, though, Mekalanos said his hope is that the missteps that brought the ugly strain of the disease from Asia to the west will not repeat and lead to its further spread. “Cholera is a disease of the impoverished,” he said. “When the standards of living are already at the lowest levels, cholera is a killer of historic proportions. If it spreads to other parts of the world, in those kinds of settings, I fear there will be a very high rate of death.”
UN officials said Banbury is currently in Haiti, “actively discussing with the Mission what more the UN can do to help Haiti deal with the outbreak.”
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t!
This is about what I expect from the UN. YMMV.
Not sure the UN is entirely to blame. From what I’ve read on Wikipedia of Nepal. It’s present day government is pretty much a shambles. After going from a monarchy to a “republic” of sorts. But it sounds more as if their army has taken charge of things. Since they refuse to do what they’re told, by the Nepal Congress. All the UN was supposed to be doing there, was to monitor elections. How the Nepalese army got involved in the Haiti situations isn’t clear to me. How would they be working for the UN? Aren’t there plenty of UN troops from healthier parts of the world? Anyway, if this is true. It just goes to show how fouled up the UN is at doing things. So we should trust them about getting the whole Global Warming thing right, too? Sure!
Save the ideology for Rush:
http://tinyurl.com/7spnvrn
Glenn : The majority of UN “peacekeepers” in my experience are from less-developed nations. As are most of the administrators. My team had the unfortunate honor of following a bunch of Bangladeshi soldiers into a camp in Angola. It took our new Romanian soldiers over a month to bring the camp up to new (still low) hygiene standards. The problem is the soldiers AND their government get huge payments from the UN. Hell, some of these governments probably couldn’t afford an army without the aid of the UN. And the soldiers love it: they immediately get a huge pay increase along with big adjustments and allotments that will increase their usual pay by five or six times. Why? Because all soldiers are paid the same whether from Nepal or Finland. I know soldiers who volunteered over and over because, after just a few years, they could go home and retire!
And remember – you and I are borrowing money so our government can continue to pay these third world soldiers premium wages.
Surprise surprise!
Well, it is only fitting.
I mean the French in “La Nouvelle France” and the British in “New England” brought various and assorted pestilence to America’s shores from Québec City, to Plymouth Rock to New Orleans and the Spaniards weren’t much better… (The Indians were already in severe decline by the time of the little Big Horn.)
Cholera from Nepal into Haiti?
No surprise there at all…
7000 dead with 500,000 infected doesn’t sound so bad to me. And “Haiti never had a case of cholera before the UN troops arrived two years ago”—you mean after the earthquake with all the predictions of cholera were a lie?
Disease, weather, and greed kill more people many times over than all the armies of history. How many of the Horsemen does that actually make?
Funny I was just reading about brand new diseases are supposed to come out of declining habitat for endangered species and/or the still too prevalent consumption of bush meat. Just like global economics, the world is homognizing. We won’t find our natural level until all the animals have shared all their diseases back and forth. Hoomans should still be around, we have an advantage: SCIENCE! and the bugs are not intentionally motivated but Darwinianly designed to only take a portion. Isn’t that a beautifully designed clockwork universe that couldn’t be more perfect?
Yes, I think so.
Note to Editors: we need another Global Warming Post as the Deniers are doubling up in their negative chant. Quite amusing to attend to my regular reading where AGW is assumed in a discussion of related materials. Only in the blogosphere and Main Stream Media do we get this anti-SCIENCE trope. So on par with religion it is.
Silly Hoomans.
Don’t they usually bring the raping of children with them too?
This is no surprise to anyone who has read “The Coming Plague” by Laurie Garrett.
Very unfortunate but at least the UN came to help the people.
Compare this 10’s of thousands killed by the Christian Taliban when Pizarro showed up in the Inca’s “helping” the people learn the new loving religion.
Instead of helping, the TeaPublican Spaniards brought Smallpox and wiped out their civilization. The UN is a far better visitor.
And so it goes even to San Francisco bathhouses
Never been to a san Fran bathhouse. I gather these places are 50% married closet cases.
So how was it for you?
Great, I got a spectator seat and it was better than the circus. More like a freak show really.
I NEED TO SUGGEST SOMETHING…
I WOULD SUGGEST, a 2-3 week lay-over period, between going from 1 major area to another.
This is a long enough time frame to check for Problems with Carrier virus/bugs/rats…what ever.
These guys might as well be Sailors from before the 1900’s, carrying things from place to place that they PICKED UP from the last 2-100 ports…