They say bad news comes in threes.
The quake that devastated Haiti led to the conditions that have now spawned a deadly cholera epidemic. In this report for the Pulitzer Center, Lisa Armstrong warns of the next looming opportunistic health threat:
Haiti used to be a model for combating AIDS. Experts at first thought the epidemic might wipe out a third of the population. But instead the country became a surprising success story: Thanks to significant financial support from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief as well as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria prevalence rates fell from 9.4 percent in 1993 to 2.2 percent in 2008.
January’s earthquake, however, destroyed many health facilities, and experts are afraid that with the high rates of rape, prostitution, and promiscuity in the camps, there will be an explosive increase in the number of new HIV infections.
