Angry voters flood streets as several candidates reject Haiti election - Christian Science Monitor

Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Frustrated voters flooded the streets and several presidential candidates called for the government to annul Sunday’s Haiti election due to problems at polls throughout the country.

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Scores of voters said they were prohibited from voting because their names did not appear on rolls at the polling places. Angry voters threw rocks and bottles at United Nations peacekeeping forces and shut down polling places.

Twelve of the 19 presidential candidates held an afternoon press conference calling for the vote to be canceled. They accused the Inite party, backed by President Rene Preval, of "massive fraud."

RELATED: In Haiti election, voter confusion, apathy loom large

As polls closed at 4 p.m. peaceful demonstrations clogged the streets of Petionville, a neighborhood in the hills above downtown Port-au-Prince.

“We are not going to stand for an election that is not the will of the people,” says Abner Jean, who could not vote despite holding a valid registration card. His name did not appear on rolls. “If they put in a candidate that we did not choose, we’ll use whatever means necessary to kick them out.”

Observers said problems were reported throughout the country. Many voters who’d been displaced by the earthquake did not know where to vote, resulting in frustration and confusion.

The electoral commission held a press conference urging calm and reassuring the public that the vote was on track.

Representatives for the commission, CEP, said voters tried to use out-of-date cards or were going to the wrong polling places. They urged voters to call a toll-free number or go to the commission’s Web site to find their polling place.

“There are places where bandits shut down polls, shots were fired, and stones were thrown,” said Opont Pierre, director general of the CEP. “But it is only a small percentage of the polling areas and it won’t stop us from voting and getting a valid result.”

By that time, however, Haitians had already taken to Port-au-Prince streets. They rushed to the candidates’ press conference.

Michel Martelly, a popular musician considered one of the leading candidates in a field of 19, said the meeting was held "to denounce today's massive fraud all over the country."

Rapper Wyclef Jean appeared moments later with Martelly, who is known as “Sweet Mickey.” The crowd that formed erupted as Jean hugged Martelly.

Song broke out with lyrics like “Oh Mickey, now we’ve been delivered,” and “They gave us cholera, they call it poison,” a reference to the cholera epidemic that has killed more than 1,600 and continues to spread.

Nearby, blue helmeted UN soldiers and Haitian police in riot gear lined street sides.

The crowd followed Martelly and Jean, who were joined by Charles Henry Baker, a white-haired businessman who also complained that the vote was unfair.

It was a raucous end to a voting day that began quietly with teenagers playing soccer on traffic-free streets, using earthquake rubble as goal markers as women and children filtered to church.

Tensions grew as the day unfolded and more people complained they’d been prohibited from voting.

Laurent Yvone, who lives in a camp for people displaced by January’s earthquake, lined up with thousands of early this morning. The polling place for the camp, known as Camp Corail, had just 39 registered names, however.

“There are more than 5,000 people here and the [Interim Electoral Commission] sent us less than 40 names. We don’t have enough ballots,” says the polling place’s supervisor, Elizer Fritznel.

Mr. Fritznel fled before the polls were supposed to close at 4 p.m. Only a handful of voters cast ballots there.

“If we can’t vote, these ballots are not going to leave here,” Mr. Yvone said. “This is corruption.”

RELATED: In Haiti election, voter confusion, apathy loom large

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Cholera outbreak likely to grip Haiti for months - USA Today

A cholera outbreak in earthquake-ravaged Haiti that has killed more than 900 people will continue for at least six months, possibly years, experts say.The outbreak has spread quickly, reaching at least six of Haiti's 10 provinces since it was confirmed Oct. 22, says Donna Eberwine-Villagrán of the Pan American Health Organization. So far, 16,800 people have been hospitalized, but she says the number affected is most likely higher because those who have not gone to a health facility have not been counted.

Her group estimates at least 200,000 people will become ill.

Now that the disease has a foothold, it will be nearly impossible to eradicate without permanent access to clean water, says Jeffrey Withey, a microbiologist with the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.

A massive earthquake in January left 1.3 million people homeless, many crowded in tent camps without plumbing.

"The outbreak will continue for the foreseeable future," Withey says.

A permanent solution in Haiti is far off, especially since government and relief agencies are overwhelmed trying to save people with the disease, says Sophie Delaunay, executive director of Doctors Without Borders USA.

The bacteria are spread through contaminated food or water. Relief agencies and the government have launched a campaign to teach people to drink only clean water, wash their hands with soap and clean water and dispose of feces properly. Cholera is lethal if untreated. It is relatively easy to treat with rehydration packs of salt or sugar water and antibiotics; even so, Delaunay says, relief agencies do not have enough supplies.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has started a $164 million fundraising effort that includes a proposed $90 million to build permanent distribution systems for clean water.

Complicating the response: riots in several cities Monday by protesters responding to rumors that U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal were to blame for the outbreak. The riots left at least one protester dead and six peacekeepers wounded.

The U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti said the protests were linked to the Nov. 28 presidential election.

Robert Quick, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who is in Haiti, says it is likely that the cause of the outbreak will never be known. Global travel and trade make it easy for the bacteria to spread, he says.

The CDC concluded in March that cholera was unlikely to occur in Haiti because the country had not seen an outbreak in at least 50 years.

Afsar Ali, a University of Florida microbiologist who studies cholera in developing countries, was not surprised by the outbreak.

Ali says he went to Haiti in August and saw too many people in crowded, squalid conditions with no access to clean water. He says more surveillance of water sources, particularly in areas outside Port-au-Prince, could have alerted authorities to cholera in the water and an education campaign could have taught people how not to spread the bacteria.

Because the focus was on disaster relief after the quake, he says, "nobody paid attention. Everyone was busy doing other things."

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Haiti spared the worst of Tomas - Christian Science Monitor

Tropical storm Tomas is heading into the central Atlantic Ocean after splitting the uprights – the 50-mile -wide Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba – as a category 1 hurricane Friday.

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After inflicting an estimated $185 million in damage on the island of St. Lucia in the Lesser Antilles last weekend, resulting in 14 deaths, Tomas's effect on Cuba, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic has been more restrained.

For residents of Haiti, still struggling to recover from last January's destructive earthquake and more recently trying to cope with an outbreak of cholera, the country dodged a bullet. So far, seven fatalities have been attributed to Tomas so far, mostly around the town of Leogane, southwest of the capital of Port-au-Prince. The city lies in a region where flooding and storm surge were said to be particularly heavy.

IN PICTURES: Tropical storm Tomas

There, initial reports indicate the storm destroyed 48 homes, partially damaged as many as 2,800, and slightly damaged another 150. But vast numbers of people in tent cities to the east have largely been spared, if initial reports hold up.

In Cuba, civil-defense officials said their country sustained little damage and no fatalities, according to the Cuban News Agency.

In Jamaica, officials were fending off questions about whether the government had over-prepared in the face of tropical-storm warnings.

"There can be no over-planning or over-reaction when there is a probable threat of a disaster," government information minister Daryl Vaz told reporters after Tomas had passed. "This was probably the best prepared we have been in terms of being proactive and doing everything we needed to do" to protect Jamaicans.

Meanwhile, across Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic, floods from the storm destroyed an estimated 1,700 homes and forced at least 8,500 people to evacuate. So far, no fatalities have been reported.

Prior to the storm, concerns centered on the effect a direct hit would have on some 1.3 million people living in tent cities in and around the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. In some ways, it's a vulnerability too many Haitians have long experienced, says Julie Schindall, a spokeswoman for Oxfam/America in Port-au-Prince.

She notes that before the earthquake, some 80 percent of the capital's residents lived in slums in shelters hardly more robust than the tents that now house them. Even before the quake, they lived "in a country that doesn't have the infrastructure to take care of itself on a day-to-day basis the way that its neighboring countries do," she says.

As it turned out, winds in the capital were mild, and the rainfall not nearly as heavy as people feared. The worst flooding came to tent cities built on the streets of Port-au-Prince, says Andrea Koppel, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross who currently is in the capital. There were no other paths for running water to follow.

Outside the city center, the Red Cross had been working with residents for months to dig drainage ditches and build sandbag retaining walls to keep water and mud at bay.

Teams have been working their way through these areas assessing any damage, Ms. Koppel notes. And while they have yet to report in, she says she counts it as an encouraging sign that during the height of the storm, volunteers in these areas still had cell phone service, and they reported nothing significant in the way of damage.

Prior to the storm, public health officials and aid groups were trying to stem an outbreak of cholera that threatened to reach the city and spread. At the time, representatives of the American Red Cross in Port-au-Prince expressed concerns over the effect flooding through the tent cities would have in spreading the disease.

So far, public-health officials have succeeded in keeping the small handful of cases isolated, Koppel says.

Given the 800 people killed during the 2008 hurricane season, when Haiti fell within the crosshairs of four tropical cyclones and fewer people were exposed to the elements, "we got very, very lucky" with Tomas, Koppel says.

The event once again throws a spotlight on the challenges the international community faces in trying to keep the tottering country upright while also trying to help it rebuild and become self-sustaining, aid workers say.

Tomas's timing was terrible, Oxfam's Ms. Schindall says, adding, "I sincerely hope that this is a reminder to us all that we need to seize on this opportunity after the earthquake to rebuild this country properly."

IN PICTURES: Tropical storm Tomas

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Haiti cholera outbreak 'slowing' - BBC News

25 October 2010 Last updated at 00:27 ET The BBC's Laura Trevelyan: "Cholera is alarming at the rate in which it spreads"

Health officials have said there are signs that the cholera outbreak in central Haiti may be stabilising.

Although the death toll moved past 250 with more than 3,000 people infected, fewer cases were reported.

Five were detected on Saturday in the capital, Port-au-Prince, but they were quickly diagnosed and isolated.

Officials say the disease is a serious threat to the 1.3 million survivors of January's earthquake who are living in tented camps surrounding the city.

The poor sanitary conditions make them vulnerable to cholera, which is caused by bacteria transmitted through contaminated water or food.

Cholera causes diarrhoea and vomiting leading to severe dehydration, and can kill quickly if left untreated through rehydration and antibiotics.

Anxious wait

On Sunday, the director general of Haiti's health department, Gabriel Thimote, said the number of people who had died in the outbreak was rising, but more slowly than during the previous 24 hours.

"We have registered a diminishing in numbers of deaths and of hospitalised people in the most critical areas," he told reporters.

"The tendency is that it is stabilising, without being able to say that we have reached a peak," he added.

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We must gear up for a serious epidemic, even though we hope it won't happen”

End Quote Nigel Fisher UN Deputy Special Representative in Haiti Mr Thimote also expressed optimism the outbreak could be contained.

"It's not difficult to prevent the spread to Port-au-Prince."

The five victims isolated in the capital had become infected in the Artibonite region - the main outbreak zone - and then travelled there, the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

"These cases thus do not represent a spread of the epidemic because this is not a new location of infection," it explained, adding that the development was nevertheless "worrying".

Sarah Jacobs, of the charity Save The Children, told the BBC that although there were encouraging signs, the situation remained highly dangerous.

"There are still hundreds of thousands of people living in extremely bad conditions in the capital and the key thing now is to prevent this disease from spreading," she said.

Ms Jacobs said that informing the public would be crucial.

Haitian officials said more households were following advice on drinking clean water and taking care with personal hygiene.

However, the BBC's Laura Trevelyan in Saint-Marc in Artibonite says some people are still using water from a river believed to be at the centre of the outbreak.

And at the town's hospital, doctors said they were seeing about the same number of cases as they did on Saturday, our correspondent says.

Outside crowds of people continue to wait anxiously - some are desperate to be admitted, others are clamouring for news of their relatives, she adds.

Only those with the most severe cases of diarrhoea are being admitted.

Continue reading the main story Intestinal infection caused by bacteria transmitted through contaminated water or foodSource of contamination usually faeces of infected peopleCauses diarrhoea, vomiting, severe dehydration, and can kill quicklyEasily treated with antibiotics; not usually fatalThe worst-hit areas of the outbreak are Saint-Marc, Grande Saline, L'Estere, Marchand Dessalines, Desdunes, Petite Riviere, Lachapelle, and St Michel de l'Attalaye.

A number of cases have also been reported in the city of Gonaives, and towns closer to the capital, including Archaei, Limbe and Mirebalais.

Officials hope to set up cholera treatment centres in Artibonite and the neighbouring Central Plateau region, and in Port-au-Prince, where patients can be isolated. International specialists are also being flown in to help.

"We must gear up for a serious epidemic, even though we hope it won't happen," Nigel Fisher, the UN's deputy special representative in Haiti, told the Reuters news agency.

This is the first time in a century that cholera has struck the nation, which has enough antibiotics to treat 100,000 cases of cholera and intravenous fluids to treat 30,000, according to the UN.

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