The Big Picture this week features heartrending photos from Haiti, ten months later.  Images like this:

Misthaki Pierre cries after the burial of his mother, Serette Pierre, who died of cholera October 29, 2010
 in Back D' Aguin, Haiti. Her death has left Misthaki without a mother or father.

It is shocking that in this day and age, with the whole world mobilized and billions of dollars of aid pouring in after the catastrophe, cholera has made a comeback.  October saw thousands infected and hundreds die from the disease, which spreads when people ingest food or water contaminated with feces containing the bacteria.  It can result in death within four to twelve hours of symptoms.

Cholera is easily treated with fluids and antibiotics.  So the fact that it's raging through Port-au-Prince, despite the best efforts of the UN, the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, and the Red Cross, not to mention the active involvement of Presidents Clinton and Bush, means that somehow our best isn't good enough. 

How can that be?

I understand where there's billions of dollars pouring in and multiple aid organizations and no one coordinating them corruption takes its cut, but the scale of the failure here is surprising to me given the scale of the effort.  I don't know.  Is ten months enough time after such a catastrophe to take the necessary steps to avoid a cholera epidemic? 

The slow pace of relief is leading to a cascade of catastrophes.  Cholera is just the start.  Lack of communication is leading to social unrest...

A group of stone-throwing local residents, apparently fearful of contagion, demonstrated violently on Tuesday against a cholera treatment center being set up by the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Saint-Marc in the main central Artibonite outbreak region, MSF and local media said.

On Monday at Dajabon on the Haiti-Dominican Republic border, U.N. peacekeepers fired into the air to prevent Haitians from crossing over to a farmers' market which had been suspended as a health precaution by Dominican authorities, media in the Dominican Republic reported.

And the spreading anarchy will surely be exploited by whomever wins November's elections. 

It just goes on and on. 

Fucking tragedy.