I ask people if they are optimistic. “With reservations,” says Schulz, whose impressive CTC in Delmas 33 I visit on my way to the airport, so that I leave Haiti wafting chlorine. He says that cholera can be eradicated (reduced to zero cases in a specific area) but not eliminated (permanently reduced to zero cases, worldwide). “This is an island nation with a border. It is possible to contain it. Cholera is so crazy and so easy to treat.”
“Yes,” says the Elimination Plan, although an Action Contre La Faim official describes it as “tidied away on a shelf,” for all the good it has done so far.
“Yes,” says the President of Haiti, Michel Martelly, who told Time that he has tried “to change the perception of Haiti as a place where nothing works.”
“Yes,” says the brand new Marriott Hotel, opened during my visit, which is meant to symbolize Haiti’s fast-growing economy and faces the hills where people drink Vibrio cholerae.
“No,” says a chief nurse in the hospital at Gaumont, which houses a CTC. No, because only three of her nursing staff are paid, yet they are expected to cover the whole hospital and the CTC, as well as report data promptly. She is furious. “We can’t eradicate cholera. We’ve no clean drinking water, there are no toilets. We are not going to escape this.”
