NON-FIC: Help Haiti More
Nov. 20th, 2010 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
songquakeHi, folks. For those of you who are interested in such things, I am offering drabbles in exchange for donation pledges over at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
songquake_fic.
Cholera is just awful. And the huge tragedy is that this situation was utterly preventable: there just wasn't the political will (by the Haitian government, the UN, or NGO's) to take the steps needed to ensure that Haitians have clean/potable water.
It's hitting me particularly hard because clean water is something about which I'm very passionate. Over 2 million children die each year from diarrhea, most of which is caused by untreated water and/or poor sanitation conditions. That accounts for something like 20% of all childhood heaths. It unconscionable.
I also know someone who has a family member who just died from cholera, so it hit me where I live.
I spent a good deal of time this evening crying, yelling at God, and feeling impotent. I feel like the world has got no real sense of priorities. Really, the best thing to do would be either evacuate the country's population to somewhere that has excellent sewage and water treatment, or drop some pre-fab water purification plants on the various towns. I was horrified that anything was getting more news coverage than this. I mean, really, NYTimes? Is the trend of touching-up school photos really worth more webpage space (it was a lead story on the home page, and above the fold with a giant picture in today's hard copy edition of The New York Times) than the lengths Haitians are going to in order to stem the tide of cholera (it's not listed on the home page, in the paper version was front-page but below the fold, and right now is not on the first visible screen of the World section on the website)? How is it possible that anything, even the economic crisis, is newsworthy when so many people worldwide are dying from water-borne illnesses?
Hence yelling at God about the priorities of our culture.
And my mom's comment that Haiti won't get the water and sanitation help that will make a difference, much less evacuation to someplace that has clean water, because "Haiti is filled with brown people."
There are, however, charities working to ameliorate not only the medical crisis, but also mitigate the water and sanitation issues. Links are available on thesongquake_fic link above.
Thanks, folks. And if you feel moved to donate without the incentive of a bit of fiction, please do.
songquake_fic. Cholera is just awful. And the huge tragedy is that this situation was utterly preventable: there just wasn't the political will (by the Haitian government, the UN, or NGO's) to take the steps needed to ensure that Haitians have clean/potable water.
It's hitting me particularly hard because clean water is something about which I'm very passionate. Over 2 million children die each year from diarrhea, most of which is caused by untreated water and/or poor sanitation conditions. That accounts for something like 20% of all childhood heaths. It unconscionable.
I also know someone who has a family member who just died from cholera, so it hit me where I live.
I spent a good deal of time this evening crying, yelling at God, and feeling impotent. I feel like the world has got no real sense of priorities. Really, the best thing to do would be either evacuate the country's population to somewhere that has excellent sewage and water treatment, or drop some pre-fab water purification plants on the various towns. I was horrified that anything was getting more news coverage than this. I mean, really, NYTimes? Is the trend of touching-up school photos really worth more webpage space (it was a lead story on the home page, and above the fold with a giant picture in today's hard copy edition of The New York Times) than the lengths Haitians are going to in order to stem the tide of cholera (it's not listed on the home page, in the paper version was front-page but below the fold, and right now is not on the first visible screen of the World section on the website)? How is it possible that anything, even the economic crisis, is newsworthy when so many people worldwide are dying from water-borne illnesses?
Hence yelling at God about the priorities of our culture.
And my mom's comment that Haiti won't get the water and sanitation help that will make a difference, much less evacuation to someplace that has clean water, because "Haiti is filled with brown people."
There are, however, charities working to ameliorate not only the medical crisis, but also mitigate the water and sanitation issues. Links are available on the
songquake_fic link above. Thanks, folks. And if you feel moved to donate without the incentive of a bit of fiction, please do.
