In December last year, we posted about the cholera outbreak in Haiti and how the multimillion-dollar UN fund had been blocked, you can read our post here.
HAWG (Haiti Advocacy Working Group) published yesterday an article about congressional lawmakers joining forces to secure $10 million in FY2018 Omnibus Bill to address Haiti’s cholera epidemic:
In 2010, United Nations peacekeepers contaminated Haiti’s largest river, which led to a cholera outbreak that infected hundreds of thousands of Haitians and killed nearly 10,000 people. It also left destitute thousands of families that lost their households’ primary breadwinners or suffered some other economic hit as a result of the epidemic.
During the appropriations process, 36 House lawmakers, led by Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson (FL-24), sent letters to the chairs and ranking members of the State, Foreign Operations committees in both chambers, urging them to authorize $11.7 million in the FY 2018 omnibus funding bill for this purpose. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and New York Congresswoman Nita Lowey (NY-17), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, have long championed this issue. In a second letter, several House lawmakers have requested the inclusion of bill and report language in the FY 2019 budget that would provide an additional $22 million in U.N. dollars unused this year to the fund.
Read full artice on HAWG’s website.
