- News & Reports - Take action - Donate to CHAN Site Clean water
and cholera vaccination in Haiti: Two stories from NPR's Richard
Knox Submitted by CHAN on April 14, 2012 - 08:15 Water In The
Time Of Cholera: Haiti's Most Urgent Health Problem By Richard
Knox, NPR, April 12, 2012 (See the original posting of this
story on NPR for numerous source links.) In the teeming city of
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, millions of people have no reliable water
supply. Many of the underground pipes that did exist were
ruptured by the 2010 earthquake. Many public water kiosks are
dry. So life for most people is a constant struggle for water.
And now that cholera has invaded Haiti, safe drinking water has
become Haiti's most urgent public health problem. Contaminated
water is the main cause of cholera, which has sickened 530,000
Haitians since late 2010 and killed more than 7,000. In Port-au-
Prince, street vendors sell water in plastic baggies for a few
pennies. Much of the city's water supply is trucked in by
commercial vendors or