This isn't bad luck, this is poverty
Doctors fear that an outbreak of cholera could be spreading towards Haiti's capital in a
fresh blow after the devastating earthquake earlier this year. Photo: AP
Via boingboing.net
Today, cholera is all but non-existent in developed countries. Not because we're immune. Not because we have access to a miracle drug. It's simply about money. Money, and the will to build public sanitation systems that treat the poor and the wealthy to an equal level of separation between what we drink and what we excrete.
And it is all about the money. What kills you isn't so much the diarrhea, itself, but the loss of fluids and essential salts and minerals. Replace enough of those, soon enough, and people tend to survive.
Right now, people are dying in Haiti not because we don't know how to save them, but because of a lack of access, both to clean water and to Oral Rehydration Therapy. In other words, they are dying not because of a disease, but because of poverty.
How You Can Help:
• Donate to Doctors Without Borders and help get Oral Rehydration Therapy to people who need it.
• Donate to World Vision, which does both medical work, and helps bring clean, safe drinking water to communities around the world.
• Donate to Water.Org, a charity devoted to water infrastructure projects.
Read the full report posted at boingboing by Maggie Koerth-Baker.
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