Madam – The terrible natural disaster that has befallen the people of Haiti should not blind us to the fact that many of the deaths were avoidable and many Haitians died simply from the effects of poverty.
The US Geological Survey estimates that the loss of life from earthquakes can be 10 times higher in developing countries, and the damage can be up to 100 times worse. This seems to be partly because of poor or non-enforced building standards that allow multistorey buildings collapse too easily, killing and maiming those inside.
In the poorest country in the western hemisphere, it is not hard to imagine the multitude of other problems the Haitian government, such as it is, had to deal with before getting to building code enforcement.
The collapsed hospitals, also built without adherence to proper building codes, exacerbate the situation.
Mother Nature may have had a starring role in this tragedy, but the continued impoverishment of the country contributed to the sight of piles of dead bodies on the streets of Port-au-Prince. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Even before the earthquake struck, Haiti already had little in the way of vital infrastructure. The vast majority of its citizens lived in abject poverty, and the country was virtually a byword for official corruption and political violence. One per cent of its population owns almost half of the country’s wealth.
This situation resulted from the usual mixture of colonial exploitation, and the activities of post-colonial corrupt and oppressive political leaders and their lackeys.
The question is not how such a state of affairs came about, but why the international community simply turned a blind eye to what was a textbook example of a failed state sitting right on its doorstep.
It is not as though Haiti is located in some far-flung, seldom visited part of the world. The United Nations has been stationed there since 1994.
By all means let us bemoan the deficiency of the infrastructure in Haiti, the lack of hospitals, medical supplies, trained nurses and doctors, clean water, sanitation facilities and proper roads.
But, please, let’s not try to pretend that we didn’t already know that the country was in a terrible state, yet simply chose to do nothing about it. – Yours, etc,