NEWS ~ Avian Bird Flu in Haiti?

When countries like Haiti make the excruciatingly slow climb out of poverty and corruption, an apparently minor hitch could have disastrous implications on that plodding progress. Today, the Sun Sentinel ran an op-ed on the potentially devastating impact of Avian Flu, now making the rounds in the Caribbean, on Haiti.

While Puerto Rico, a U.S. protectorate, can probably easily weather any disruption in trade between itself and Dominican Republic, Caribbean countries - like Haiti - without the safety net of the U.S. economy, will suffer. The Sentinel writes, "egg prices in Port-au-Prince jumped 25 percent to more than $3 a carton, according to news reports." Little fluxes like these, with high gasoline prices effecting costs too, present terrible difficulties to the majority of Haitians, whose meager incomes place them well below the poverty line.

Though the strain found in the DR is less virulent than that recently found in Asia, the Sun Sentinel's editorial board rightly points out that

Haiti can't bear this now — not while making slow, but what appears to be steady progress under President René Préval. The country imports at least 1 million eggs and hundreds of thousands of chickens from the Dominican Republic daily, according to the country's agriculture minister. A bird flu epidemic and food shortage would further stress a population whose health is already compromised. It could also wipe out a means of livelihood for merchants who sell poultry products.

Some might remember the last animal-related food disaster to impact Haiti: the slaughter of the Creole Pigs. When the African Swine Fever virus spread to Haiti from the Dominican Republic, the U.S. government put enormous pressure on the Haitian government to slaughter all their pigs - offering a seemingly excellent eradication and re-population plan. Thus, Creole Pigs were slaughtered and U.S. shipped in pigs from the Midwest. But the American swine were higher maintenance, requiring imported feed, clean water and falling ill more often. The program failed disastrously and had lasting and continuing impacts on poor farmer.

I would like to under second the Sun Sentinels recommendation that: "The United Nations, USAID and other humanitarian organizations must do everything in their power to help address the problem before the situation worsens."