'Every day you're hopeless': Haitians eye foreign help warily as gangs, cholera outbreak take toll
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad — Haiti’s government announced that at least eight people have died from cholera, raising concerns about a potentially fast-spreading scenario and reviving memories of an epidemic that killed nearly 10,000 people a decade ago.
The cases - the first cholera deaths reported in three years - came in a community called Dekayet in southern Port-au-Prince and in the gang-controlled seaside slum of Cite de Soleil, where thousands of people live in cramped, unsanitary conditions.
“Cholera is something that can spread very, very quickly,” warned Laure Adrien, director general of Haiti’s health ministry.
A boy diagnosed with cholera receives treatment at a cholera center in Anse D'Hainault, Haiti (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery)
As Haiti continues to grapple with gang violence, inflation and rising cholera cases, a proposed U.N. security response is being met with caution by some Haitians.
"Every day you're hopeless, feeling like you're left behind, you're deserted, nobody's doing something to keep you safe," Stephanie Andressol told ABC News.
Andressol lives near the border separating Haiti and the Dominican Republic. She says she and other women refuse to beg for handouts and want to work to support their families. However, they don't feel safe in the streets.
"I haven't been able to go to Port-au-Prince just because I'm scared of being raped," Andressol said. "Gangs would tell me to take off my clothes and see if I have money."
Gangs are openly in control of some neighborhoods, setting up checkpoints along roads to commit robberies, residents say. Some schools have reopened, but classrooms remain mostly empty, as it isn't safe for children to go to school.
Gang violence coupled with inflation have forced businesses to close, leaving people without jobs.
"We had a shipment of water coming in, there were like two thousand gallons, they got held up, and they took the truck and the water," Janco Damas, the owner of a commercial bakery in the Centre Ville section of Port-au-Prince.
The rising prices of flour and shortening meant operating at a loss for the bakery once popular for selling potable water and Haitian paté — a pastry dish made with flour and meat or fish. Production dipped and so did the number of customers.
"The streets are dangerous, people don't leave their house," Damas said.
In a country that takes pride in being the world's first Black-led republic, 4.7 million people now face acute hunger, according to the United Nations' World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization. For the first time in Haiti, 19,000 people are facing catastrophic hunger levels, the U.N. organizations said last week.
The civil unrest has also coincided with a cholera outbreak. Between Sept. 26 and Oct. 8, 2022, the Haiti Ministry of Public Health and Population reported 32 lab-confirmed cases of cholera and 224 suspected cases from Port-au-Prince and Cité Soleil, according to the World Health Organization. A total of 189 people have been hospitalized, of which 16 deaths have been reported. The most affected age group is 1 to 4-year-olds, the ministry’s data shows.
Some Haitians say they are against foreigners stepping in to assist. Others welcome the help, although they might be doing so reluctantly.
"The history speaks for itself, so preferably all Haitians would definitely want for us to resolve whatever is going on back home, without the meddling of the U.S. or any country," Oriol Vatelia, who was born in Haiti and now lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida, told ABC News.
"But, I guess that's just part of the playbook, when it gets so bad you almost have no choice but to accept whatever that comes your way," Vatelia said.
