The Clock Just Ran Out In Haiti

News this afternoon that Haiti is suffering an outbreak of disease, which given the housing conditions where hundreds of thousands if not millions are still homeless and are living in refugee camps, this situation there could quickly lead to disaster.

An outbreak of severe diarrhea in rural central Haiti has killed at least 54 people and sickened hundreds more who overwhelmed a crowded hospital Thursday seeking treatment.

Hundreds of patients lay on blankets in a parking lot outside St. Nicholas hospital in the port city of St. Marc with IVs in their arms for rehydration. As rain began to fall in the afternoon, nurses rushed to carry them inside.

Doctors were testing for cholera, typhoid and other illnesses in the Caribbean nation's deadliest outbreak since a January earthquake that killed as many as 300,000 people.

"What we know is that people have diarrhea, and they are vomiting, and (they) can go quickly if they are not seen in time," said Catherine Huck, country deputy for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. She said doctors were still awaiting lab results to pinpoint the disease.

The sick come from across the rural Artibonite region, which did not experience significant damage in the Jan. 12 quake but has absorbed thousands of refugees from the devastated capital 45 miles (70 kilometers) south of St. Marc.

A total of 54 people died and 619 were ill, according to Yolaine Surena, a coordinator for Haiti's civil protection department.

There are reports the outbreak is cholera but this has not been confirmed yet.  Any way you look it it, this is bad...and I'm surprised that something worse hasn't happened earlier given this atrocious conditions that continue to exist.

Part of the reason why there continues to be such horrendous conditions on the ground in Haiti is because of various bureaucratic garbage here in the US.  $1.15 billion has been appropriated for Haiti but little of it has arrived, and the rest of the aid above that is being blocked by GOP Sen. Tom Coburn.

I hope he can sleep well tonight.  No doubt he will.