As Dominican President Danilo Medina visits Haiti and meets with interim President Jocelerme Privert, the bureaucrats he has left behind in power are dragging their feet and setting up the Dominican Republic for what could be one of its worst health crises in a century.
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| Viral hotspot represents threat to national security. AlMomento |
According to the large digital portal AlMomento, the Dominican School of Medicine warned that an outbreak of cholera, which was previously under control at the border, could quickly flare up again.
Likewise, dengue, malaria, and the newly-discovered Mayaro virus could soon begin to kill more people than the hurricane itself did, with the deaths being more agonizingly slow, causing long term problems for the flow of people not just in the Caribbean, but potentially for the entire Latin American region.
When Haiti finds itself facing a calamity, its citizens flee en mass towards the Dominican Republic, since it's the only country with which it shares a land border, thereby placing enormous strain on already-overstretched resources in the DR.
Although the global response to the 2010 earthquake which devastated Haiti was enormous, this time around people are more reluctant to donate, seeing how their money was squandered by international NGOs which only enrich foreigners.
The next calamity may also see a muted response, especially with United Nations peacekeepers slated to leave the country after this final mandate expires. The Dominican Republic will have to assume the role of not just the United Nations, but also of financial donor for Haiti, as the world turns a blind eye to what appears to be a never-ending tragedy.
In its efforts to help its neighbor, the Dominican government appears to be setting itself up to get knocked out by the unexpected outbreak of some deadly virus at the border, making its altruism a suicidal affair.
