UN Haiti cholera appeal

Haiti's 2010 earthquake was catastrophic London - Arabstoday The United Nations has launched a $2.2 billion appeal for a campaign to halt a cholera epidemic in Haiti. The bacterial epidemic, which has been widely blamed on Nepalese UN peacekeepers in a camp in the town of Mirebalais, has killed 7,750 people. UN leader Ban Ki-moon launched the 10-year initiative to halt it today as it was confirmed that several hundred people have also been killed in neighboring Dominican Republic. Ki-moon did not suggest the cause of the epidemic but UN officials said 70 percent of the $2.2 billion needed in the next decade would be used to build water, sanitation facilities and a new oral vaccine. Lawyers for some victims and families of the dead have called on the United Nations to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. Ban acknowledged that the epidemic has "added a heavy rate of suffering on a country already recovering from the largest natural disaster in the history of the western hemisphere."