RELIEF EFFORTS, WHAT WENT WRONG?

The racism of the foreigners, as it was stupidly expressed by the individual from Thailand who offered 50,000 bottles of skin-whitening concoction to make the Haitian people more appealing to the international community? Should we blame the nature of the disaster, after all the American government did not do much better after Katrina, at least initially?

No! We can only blame ourselves. To paraphrase one of my colleagues, the disaster occurred even before the first tremor was felt. The health care system in Haiti was an on-going disaster, where the state-run medical school was closed because of an unending violent strike by the students, where employees were not paid their salaries for several months, where a large portion of the health care was delivered by non-governmental organizations with minimal oversight from the ministry of health, a system where the officials can recite all the dismal health statistics but in fact are not willing or not able to effect changes. To illustrate this point, I recently heard a member of the government state that the number of health care professionals for a population of 10,000 Haitians is 6.7, while the recommended ratio by the World Health organization is 25/10,000. I asked him then why all the graduates of the Cuban medical schools that have returned to the country have not been employed. It is a situation where the right hand does not know what the left hand is busy doing.

We have grown accustomed to sit behind our comfortable desks and wait for the international community to take action on our behalf or dictate to us what we should do. This attitude would have to be predicated on the firm knowledge that the international community wants nothing but what is good for Haiti. Alas, our history does not support that. Look what has happened to our rice production! Look what has happened to our sugar industry! Look what has happened to our farmers and our agriculture. Look what happened to our economy, under the measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund.

This situation of dependence where we keep putting our hand out for donations has to end. It is time for our leaders to learn that they have to take charge of their destiny, of the destiny of the people they have been elected to govern. What the international community is eager to give us, may not be what we need. So we can no longer afford to elect unprepared candidates that have no knowledge of international relations, no knowledge of international politics, no understanding of the history of Haiti vis-à-vis the rest of the nations of the Americas and of the World. We have to know what we need, what our citizens need. Then we can go and ask from our powerful neighbors, what we want and not what they are eager to give us. Do you need a hint?