Meanwhile, In Hell

As feared, Haiti's cholera epidemic has spread to the capital, Port-au-Prince.  Doctors are trying to do what they can but the human toll is horrendous.

The death toll has risen to at least 1,344 in the cholera outbreak in Haiti that has sickened nearly 57,000 people, the Haitian government said Monday.

The announcement came as international health officials predicted that the scale of Haiti's cholera epidemic will exceed initial estimates of 200,000 over coming months.

"Having seen how the bacteria is behaving in this environment with these people, having seen just how poor and how hungry the people are, we know we have to revise our numbers up," said Nyka Alexander, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, in a phone call with CNN.

Health workers say the Haitian population lacks immunity to cholera and Haitian medical workers lack experience treating the infection because the bacterium has not been detected on the island in more than a century.

The impoverished country's weak health and sanitation systems are only compounding the problem.

"Another factor why this epidemic has spread as far as it has and why it will continue to spread, is dirty water, poor sanitation, no toilets, malnutrition and poor access to health centers," Alexander said. "People have to walk five hours to a health center and if you have diarrhea you're not going to make it.

She added, "The disease is showing the weaknesses in the country."

Hundreds of thousands will become ill, thousands more will die.  Haiti still has no infrastructure, and no real way to defend against this epidemic.  I know we have our own problems in America, and the rest of the world has their own issues too...but it's all the more depressing to get such a powerful dose of perspective.

There's still years of work to be done there.