UN admits role in Haiti cholera outbreak that killed 10,000 people

 

 

A Haitian with symptoms of cholera is transported in a wheelbarrow in the slums of Cite-Soleil in Port-au-Prince November 19, 2010. © Eduardo Munoz / Reuters

 

United Nations officials acknowledged, for the first time, the role peacekeepers played in the 2010 deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti that killed 10,000 people and sickened hundreds of thousands of others.

The Office of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in an email this week said "the UN has become convinced that it needs to do much more regarding its own involvement in the initial outbreak and the suffering of those affected by cholera," reported the New York Times.

 For six years, UN officials refused to accept blame for bringing cholera to Haiti, but suspicions settled on a group of UN troops from Nepal who arrived after the January 2010 earthquake. Nepal had a cholera epidemic underway at the time and raw sewage from the latrines at the UN troops’ came was allowed to seep into an adjacent river.
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