It is a privilege to publish the 2011 Harvard Humanitarian Action Summit summaries in this issue of Prehospital and Disaster Medicine. The annual Humanitarian Action Summits, which began in 2009, have included international experts from all fields of the humanitarian community. The 2011 Summit was particularly important because those attending were able to review and analyze the humanitarian ac...

This paper outlines the ways in which information technologies (ITs) were used in the Haiti relief effort, especially with respect to web-based mapping services. Although there were numerous ways in which this took place, this paper focuses on four in particular: CrisisCamp Haiti, OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi, and GeoCommons. This analysis demonstrates that ITs were a key means through which individ...

To the Editor: A nationwide outbreak of cholera caused by Vibrio cholerae O1 serotype Ogawa began in Haiti in October 2010 and has since resulted in >200,000 illnesses and 4,000 deaths (1). Additional cases of cholera attributed to the outbreak strain have subsequently been reported in the neighboring Dominican Republic and in Florida and New Jersey in the United States. In these instances, ill...

A survey conducted from May 2010 to October 2013 in five from ten departments of Haiti among 5,342 persons aged from 1 to 107 years showed a gametocytic rate = 3.2%. However, it varies greatly from one Department to another, ranging from 0.5% in Grande Anse Department to 5.9% in Southeast Department. Malaria is present in Haiti in heterogeneous coastal foci. Gametocytes occur at all ages, but t...

Introduction: For the past 7 years, a nursing school has conducted biannual medical missions in a virtually inaccessible area in Haiti. Each medical mission team provides primary care, pediatric and gynecological examinations for up to 6 days in the impoverished island nation. Methods: To improve the safety of participants engaged in this humanitarian tra...

In November 2010, Digicel and Voilá both made mobile money services publicly available in Haiti. Building upon our previous research on domestic remittances and financial practices, we returned to Haiti from December to April to identify mobile money’s potentials and challenges given the specific characteristics of the mobile money services offered and the needs of the Haitian population. This ...

On January 12, 2010, a catastrophic 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, affecting 3,500,000 people [1,2]. This severely damaged an already marginal public sanitation system, creating ideal conditions for outbreaks of major infectious diseases. In October 2010, nine months after the earthquake, an outbreak of cholera started, which quickly spread all across the country [3]. As of January 7, 2...

INTRODUCTION Few studies have focused on the mental health consequences of indirect exposure to disasters caused by naturally occurring hazards. The present study assessed indirect exposure to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti among Haitian-Americans now living in Miami; these subjects had no direct exposure to the earthquake, but retained their cultural identity, language, and connection to family ...

T massive magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, was followed 10 months later by onset of the largest cholera epidemic in recent history, with >768,831 cases and 9,113 deaths reported through the end of April 2016 (1). Although initial epidemic spikes were followed by a rapid decline in case numbers, cholera remains a critical public health problem for Haiti. Of immediate ...

The millions of deaths from cholera during the past 200 y, coupled with the morbidity and mortality of cholera in Haiti since October 2010, are grim reminders that Vibrio cholerae, the etiologic agent of cholera, remains a scourge. We report the isolation of both V. cholerae O1 and non-O1/O139 early in the Haiti cholera epidemic from samples collected from victims in 18 towns across eight Arron...