As if an earthquake coupled with enormous devastation wasn’t enough, ongoing problems and serious health issues continue to plague the island of Haiti. The latest life threatening problem to hit the residents of the island is the shortage of portable toilets, resulting in serious health risks as people are forced to defecate anywhere and everywhere. What does this mean for the island and what is being done to help out in this area? Let’s take a look…
The threat of deadly diseases spread by a shortage in portable toilets is immense on the island at this stage. Diseases such as diarrhea can become life threatening in a place where the problem is constant and ongoing. At the moment, people are forced to defecate where they are living and this has left a terrible stench in the air wherever one goes. Relief agencies have done their best to sweep waste away from camps, or burn the waste in an effort to minimize the spread of disease, but there is simply just not enough man power.
At one stage, there was only one portable toilet available to 10 000 residents of a particular area. Obviously, this would never suffice. Nearby however, army camps have dozens of portable chemical toilets for soldiers where numbers are far fewer.
Residents of one particular camp who did not have a single portable chemical toilet, had the foresight to go to the top of a hill away from their camp to defecate. However overnight rainfall washed down most of the human waste that had accumulated at the top of the hill, leaving residents to either live in their own waste or find somewhere nearby to move to, which is unfortunately not a luxury available to many Haitians at the moment.
Unfortunately, with much more urgent matters having posed an initial threat to the residents, such as shelter and food, the thought of sanitation was severely delayed. 6 weeks later however, the lack of portable toilets could result in thousands more dead if not immediately addressed. With the rainy season fast approaching and the fact that over a million people are currently residing in relief camps that have been set up, the need for outdoor portable toilets is becoming an emergency.
The target is to acquire at least 9000 portable toilets from the UK, the US and any other countries able to assist. These toilets will need to be implemented within the next few weeks before the rainy season hits the island.
It is an extremely sad situation as we all know, but without the implementation of more sanitary equipment, it could become a lot worse. Often people think about the shortage in clothes, shelter and money to the island, things like portable toilets rarely cross our minds. Let’s hope the issue gets sorted out before any further damage is done.
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