The Exponent - Purdue's Student Newspaper

According to The Associated Press, the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince on Tuesday is estimated to have affected 3 million of the country’s 9 million people. The International Red Cross estimates 45,000 to 50,000 people were killed. The United States, Britain, Canada, France, China and numerous other countries are helping relief efforts by sending military aid, doctors, supplies and rescue teams to the site of the disaster.

HIV/AIDS IN HAITI

According to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, in 2008 there were an estimated 120,000 people in Haiti living with HIV, about 110,000 adults ages 15 and older and 6,800 children ages 0 to 14. Paul Robinson, an AIDS researcher and professor of cytomics, said that in a situation like a natural disaster, the poorest citizens are often affected the most, but the transmission rate of the disease will not change.

“There is a more important issue for those who are already suffering from AIDS, and that is their ability to maintain their therapeutics – and I suspect that there may be many individuals that will be unable to get their needed therapeutics,” Robinson said in an e-mail. “For those who are not strong or are just beginning therapy, there might be serious implications if they were unable to continue their therapy.”

Ellen Gruenbaum, professor and department head of anthropology, said people severely deprived of their livelihoods are more likely to be taken advantage of sexually.

“Young girls might be especially vulnerable to going with men who have something to offer – a little food for their families or a little money – and thereby being exposed to sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS,” she said in an e-mail.

Gruenbaum said it’s not uncommon for countries to have a shortage of blood supply in an HIV/AIDS-stricken country following a natural disaster like this one.

“Anti-retroviral drugs that help prolong the lives of people living with HIV are expensive and might be extremely hard to get when there is a shortage of funds and medical supplies,” Gruenbaum said. “Also, many deaths from AIDS happen when people are exposed to other diseases while in a weakened condition, and always after natural disasters there are breakdowns in the basic conditions of public health: A lack of clean water, sanitation, food supplies and shelter leads to severe problems with disease.”

According to the Red Cross Web site, the organization is not accepting volunteers to go to Haiti to help with relief efforts.

Robinson said it’s important for people to remember that if they are going to help, they should go with an established group that has some infrastructure.

“Just arriving on the scene in any natural disaster is usually not a good idea, even if you really want to help,” he said. “The best thing is to find out what contribution you can make. Sometimes, it’s the longer term issues like housing and health care delivery that we forget about once the headline news is no longer there.”

STUDENT’S TRIP ONE WEEK BEFORE QUAKE

Jacqueline Wasynczuk, a senior in the College of Pharmacy, Nursing and Health Sciences, was in Haiti from Dec. 27 to Jan. 4, just one week before the earthquake struck the country.

She was traveling with 16 others from St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic church on Purdue’s campus.

“We went to Boudin, (Haiti),” she said. “We were working on a water systems project there – we were checking to see if the systems were working and putting homes with systems on a GPS unit.”

Wasynczuk said she thinks the country has a long road ahead of it because of the number of important buildings and government infrastructure that were damaged in the quake.

“Rebuilding will probably be very difficult,” she said. “The political structure is pretty much a mess. It’ll be hard to get government help or anything like that.”