The reader's solution is to send Mirlande back to Haiti since American health care should be for Americans first.
"I am totally against giving away free medical care to foreigners," she wrote. "All that medical care for that child must have cost several hundred thousand dollars. Not fair to Americans. My son cannot afford health care right now. Who is going to pay for an operation if he needs one? Haiti is a fallen country because of its own government. We should not have to pay for the repairs to Haiti. That country will look like it does right now for the next 25 years. The U.S. sends too much of our money to other countries when Americans need it more. Help us first."
A harsh viewpoint, but I'd be lying if I said I was surprised at this callous attitude.
Not long after reading that e-mail, I got a call from Shelton Mercer, principal of the Mercer Advisory Group, who is fresh off of a weeklong trip to Haiti. He went in his capacity as chairman of the Northeast advisory board for the North Carolina-based organization, Stop Hunger Now (stophungernow.com). Now that he's back, he has taken on the difficult job of trying to get disaster-fatigued Americans to focus again on the small, impoverished nation that was devastated by an earthquake in January.
Upward of 250,000 were killed by the quake and an estimated 1,345 more have died in the recent cholera outbreak, which has sparked rioting amid complaints that the disease was brought into Haiti by foreign-aid workers.
