International community fails in Haiti, again

How is it that more than 6,200 people have died in Haiti from cholera in just the past 10 months, and yet resources to fight the disease were reduced earlier this year before the rainy season, which predictably led to an upsurge in infections and fatalities? Furthermore, this is a country where international donors had pledged $5.6bn since the January 2010 earthquake.

The New York Times Editorial Board asked these questions on Tuesday.

Just outside of Mirebalais, in the Central Plateau region, a cholera treatment centre is operated by Partners In Health, an NGO which has been providing health care in Haiti for over 25 years. A mother walks into the compound of tents and plywood structures carrying her six-year-old child, who is already too weak to walk. An old man in his seventies, frail with close-cropped gray hair, arrives a few minutes later; he is walking - barely - and vomiting.

Under two big tents we see children in one, and adults in the other, hooked up to intravenous fluid that is rehydrating their bodies. Each bed has a 12-inch-diameter hole in the centre with a green plastic bucket underneath, for the diarrhoea that makes this disease become fatal if left untreated. A person can die within a few hours from the dehydration caused by diarrhoea and vomiting.

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