LEAD: Haiti's cholera victims demand UN compensation

Nov 8, 2011, 18:17 GMT

New York - Haitian cholera victims demanded Tuesday that the United Nations pay individual compensation and publicly apologize for failing to screen peacekeepers from Nepal, alleging that they carried the disease to Haiti.

More than 5,000 of the estimated 475,000 Haitians sickened by cholera signed a petition demanding 'hundreds of millions of dollars' in compensation.

'The sickness, death and ongoing harm from cholera suffered by Haiti's citizens are a product of the UN's multiple failures,' the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti said at the UN headquarters in New York.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had received the letter of complaint and was looking into the matter, said spokesman Martin Nesirky.

Nesirky said that Ban had considered the cholera epidemic 'very seriously from the outset and had appointed an independent panel to study the charge.'

The UN panel issued findings in May saying that the charge against the Nepalese was 'not conclusive' and the cholera outbreak was 'not the fault or deliberate action by any individuals,' Nesirky said.

The cholera epidemic has killed more than 6,600 Haitians in the last year and has made more than 475,000 others sick. Haiti says the epidemic is still ongoing, after a giant earthquake in January 2010 that killed more than 200,000 people.

The UN mission in Haiti is composed of more than 12,000 troops and police from dozens of countries, including Brazil, Nepal, Canada, Argentina, Guatemala, France and the United States.

The petition against the UN said cholera is endemic in Nepal, which reported a surge in cases in August-September 2010 in the Kathmandu valley. It said a new contingent of Nepalese troops arrived in Haiti between October 9 to 16, 2010, following three months of training in the valley.

It said the UN failed to properly dispose of human waste, dumping it into the Arbonite river - used by millions of Haitians - from a nearby UN base. The Nepalese contingent is the third largest after Brazil and Uruguay.

The petition also cited the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as saying that the cholera outbreak in Haiti came from 'one single source and was similar to strains recently isolated in South Asia.'

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