The history of health and nutrition in the Republic of Haiti

Hartford Web Publishing is not the author of the documents in World History Archives and does not presume to validate their accuracy or authenticity nor to release their copyright.

Gossip of the week, but is it so?
From Bob Corbett's Haiti list, 20 February 1996. Inquiry about illicit vaccinations apparently being given by foreigners to students in Gonaive in exchange for $100.
Cuba To Send Doctors to Haiti
The New York Times, 12 November 1998. Cuba is sending 200 doctors to help Haiti, the first accord between the two countries since diplomatic relations were severed 36 years ago. The agreement also includes collaboration in education, agriculture, tourism, and sports. Dictator Francois Papa Doc Duvalier withdrew his ambassador from Cuba in 1959.
Healthcare hell in Port-de-Paix
This Week in Haiti, Haiti Progres, 24–30 March 1999. The Immaculate Conception Hospital in the northwestern city of Port-de-Paix. Things have improved with the arrival last month of 14 Cuban doctors, part of the 300 deployed at Cuban government expense in cities and villages around Haiti. Most of the cases are malaria and diarrhea.
Country Continues to Struggle with AIDS Epidemic
By Ives Marie Chanel, IPS, 21 October 2000. Haiti has one of the highest rates of AIDS in the western hemisphere. 73 percent of the population lives below the poverty line and more than 300,000 people are infected with HIV. However, public education campaigns are believed to be having a positive effect on behaviour.
Opinion on Withheld Funds
Op-Ed by Carl Hiaasen (excerpts), Sun Sentinel, 22 June 2002. The children of Haiti's central plateau are suffering in increasing numbers because the US government has deliberately blocked millions in international loans to the hemisphere's poorest nation. A vital chunk of that money was earmarked for Haiti's health-care system, strapped in the best of times but now on the brink of collapse.
Short and bitter lives
By Paul Farmer, Le Monde diplomatique, July 2003. Haiti's infant, juvenile and maternal mortality rates are the highest in the northern hemisphere. The U.S. invasion in 1994 brought with it international aid funds, and the IDB supplied funds. But US political objectives meant that this this foreign aid to restore Haiti's health system never materialized.
U.S.-backed abstinence campaign rings hollow in Haiti
Some say providing jobs to poor country would reduce the incidence of AIDS. By Paisley Dodds, Associated Press, 14 December 2003. The abstinence message, financed by the U.S. government, is getting mixed reviews in this impoverished nation where earthly pleasures are scarce and HIV has infected 5 percent of the 8 million people. Uganda not an abstence model, for its development is far greater than Haiti.
Unsung heroes: Midwife easing grief in Haiti
By Donna Gehrke-White, The Miami Herald, Saturday 17 January 2004. Yolaine Biennevil knows her life's mission: She is to help Haitian women give birth safely. Biennevil's help allows the hostpital staff to stretch its limited resources. Many Haitian women are so desperately poor they can't even afford the equivalent of $10 to give birth at a teaching hospital.