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Little did I know, as a kid, how this insidious misconception might in fact correlate with the countless people that were constantly dying around me.
When kids from my childhood neighborhood would take dirt from the ground to their mouth, it was common for this to be brushed off with a playful but earnest mikwòb pa tiye Ayisyen–microbes don’t kill Haitians. We grew up hearing the old claim that a microbe would have to be as big as a cow to wreak any significant havoc in our community. Little did I know, as a kid, how this insidious misconception might in fact correlate with the countless people that were constantly dying around me. I remember the whispers about family acquaintances who died of tuberculosis, or HIV/AIDS and more recently cholera without plainly naming the diseases. This same story is repeating today with COVID-19, which Haitians have taken to referring to as “the little fever”, as countless members of the diaspora have flown to Haiti to enjoy their holidays without masks or any social distancing precautions despite signs that cases are rising in the country. Is this age old saying simply a blindfold–an attempt to cope with an inescapable reality?
This same story is repeating today with COVID-19, which Haitians have taken to referring to as “the little fever”
While invisible to the naked eye, viruses and bacteria, which are commonly called microbes, spread through global pandemics and are sometimes able to establish themselves permanently in an environment causing deadly epidemics. However, in less impoverished parts of the world, people are less likely to die from microbe-provoked diseases. This is because resource-rich countries can count on a functioning health system, improved sanitation and vaccination to protect their people. The idea that contacts with microbes make the body more resilient, which is the main principle behind the use of vaccines, hides a less glamorous truth: a weak body is less able to fight infections. As the immune system fails due to comorbidities or malnutrition, microbes can provoke fatal complications. In 2019, the Global Hunger Index report indicated that 49.3% of Haiti’s population was undernourished.
The smallpox epidemic, which was first introduced to Haiti in 1843, can teach us a lot about the damage deadly epidemics can do in the country in the absence of appropriate public health efforts. Smallpox was an ancient and deadly disease, especially in pregnant women and people with weak immune systems. Ever since the Spaniards first set foot in Haiti, the country has lived through multiple epidemics. Up to 4,000 people died of smallpox in Cap-Haitian in 1881. In a letter dated May 13, 1882, Catholic church Archbishop Jean Marie Guilloux estimated that it killed up to 100,000 Haitians. Another outbreak occurred in 1920 during the U.S. occupation of Haiti, which prompted the vaccination of more than a million people. Smallpox has been eradicated globally since 1979 thanks to the World Health Organization’s ring vaccination strategy, where infected people and those exposed to the virus were all vaccinated. If we are to debunk the myth that microbes do not kill Haitians, let us agree that controlling diseases like smallpox and COVID-19 is not possible if no public measures are being taken to control their spread.
While cholera spread through Europe and New York in the 19th century, it ravaged Haiti only through the last ten years, in a worsening context of poor access to water services and sanitation. Scientists emphasized that the first surge of the disease in Haiti could not be less violent due to the fact that Haitians had no prior contact with the cholera bacteria. Furthermore, they pointed out a link between reported history of cholera and death from cholera and household food insecurity. As a matter of fact, the latter can only contribute to weaken the immune system and impair the body’s ability to fight such a deadly microbe. Almost 10,000 Haitians lost their lives to cholera, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in modern history. The magnitude of this death toll makes Haiti’s COVID-19 current death toll pale in comparison. However, while the number of COVID-19 deaths is not what scientists anticipated for the country, once again this microbe has killed hundreds of us. Why is COVID-19 different from the above mentioned epidemics? No scientist knows for sure, but the fear that the worst might be yet to come is justified as we are just sailing uncharted waters, and nobody has any real answers.
The last time I checked, food insecurity and limited access to education, sanitation and healthcare were still a burden; the dispensary lines were still filled with severely ill patients. And according to a figure published by The Economist, Haiti is not set to receive doses of the COVID-19 vaccine until 2022-2023. In the face of the lax attitude of the authorities to limit the spread of COVID-19 in Haiti (no barrier measures are currently being enforced), individual precautions are doubly important. The time is only right to keep wearing masks, washing hands, avoiding crowded places with poor ventilation, practicing social distancing as much as possible and caring for one another. Caring also means canceling a trip to Haiti from a COVID-19 hotspot in the midst of a rapid global spread of a mutant variant of the virus. Because contrary to myths and false beliefs, until we can guarantee access to food, education, healthcare and decent means to live, microbes will continue to kill Haitians considerably.
