Introduction

Haiti is one of the most impoverished countries which is ranked 163 out of 188 nations on the United Nations Human Development Index. Haiti has one of the weakest economies in the Western region (Farfel, Assa, Amir, et al., 2010). According to UNICEF, New York State of the world’s children report 2015 report, Haiti’s mortality rate of children under the age of five was 73 of 1000 live births which is a rank of number 32 from the bottom many children in Haiti are experiencing difficulties in accessing clean water, food, healthcare, high rates of violence, sexual abuse, adequate shelter (Farfel, Assa, Amir, et al., 2010). Free and accessible education is also becoming a challenge in Haiti’s children leading to decreased enrolment rates to those who can’t afford to pay for private educational facilities. One of the aspects that contributed to this problem in Haiti is the earthquake that occurred in 2010 and leads to many homeless populations in the country. This research paper will analyze the effects and the impact of homelessness from the Haitian earthquake on preschool children in Port-Au-Prince and Haiti in general.

Background of the Haiti Earthquake

On Tuesday, January 12, 2010, at around 5 pm, a powerful and gigantic earthquake struck Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince, 10 miles on its south. The quake triggered some tsunamis warning to the entire region. After that, there was a series of an aftershock measuring more than 5.0 on the Richter scale which followed throughout that night and even till morning. The neighboring towns such as Jacmel and Carrefour were also significantly affected by this earthquake. The Leogane village was reported to be destroyed by 80%. The buildings across the regions were, and they all collapsed. According to the Haitian government, there is no exact number of people who perished, but it is likely to figure an approximate of 222, 517 people while more than 300,600 were left injured (Farfel, Assa, Amir, et al., 2010). More than 1.2 million people lost their homes as three million people were directly affected. Pre-school children and the youth represented the most significant percentage of the affected population. In 2010, after the earthquake, it made it challenging for the children to access basic needs of life. This triggered pre-disaster concerns about the children protection and human rights violation including human trafficking, child slavery, exploitation and sexual abuse of kids (Farfel, Assa, Amir, et al., 2010). Additionally, recovering from the traumas of the earthquake was challenging due to the widespread of cholera disease which in turn resulted in more deaths.

There is a geographical reason that will help one explain why the earthquake in Haiti was so violent leading to massive destruction. In Haiti, the earthquake occurred where there is a fault in the earth’s bedrock. This also marks the boundary between the North American and Caribbean plates. These plates slide past each other in an East-West direct, and they move about 0.8 inches in a year. The magnitude of this earthquake shocked even the scientists because it is not supposed to cause such a movement on the earth’s surface. Significant earthquakes are not that common in this region, and this is because the Caribbean is a minor plate with a shorter fault system. The geographic location of where the earthquake occurs can significantly alter the intensity. The source of this earthquake was approximately 6 miles below the earth’s surface making it extremely shallow(US Geological Survey, 2016). This is the reason why the ground shakes violently, scientifically, when the center of the earthquake is thicker, the energy produced travels very fast, and it can cause the greatest shaking of the ground. This was the most significant earthquake that caused a problem up to the moment for the pre-school children who were left homeless in 2010.

Damages caused in Port-au-Prince

Haiti experienced a great downfall economically due to the earthquake damages caused. In the year 2010, the Inter-American Development Bank estimated that the injuries caused equals to more 8 billion USD(US Geological Survey, 2016). And it anticipates that the damage is likely to reach more than 13 billion US dollars. The earthquake made the economy (gross domestic product) of Haiti to shrink by 5%. The main airport was disrupted, and all roads were destroyed. That made it difficult to reach the victims to rescue the victims (Barzilay, Schaad, Magloire, et al. 2013). More than 25% of civil servants and making the government poor and disabled to run its activities. Learning children were significantly affected as most of the schools were concerned, also all government buildings were destroyed too. Haiti remains to be one of the most impoverished countries even after the earthquake (Derby, Ber,  Leshem, et al. 2014). 80% percent still live under the poverty line and also 54% live in abject poverty because most of the Haitians are subsistence farmers.

                        Impacts of homelessness from the Earthquake

Among those developing countries, Haiti is one of them; this is only the low-income country in America. About 75 percent depending on agriculture to make a living, most of them grow smallholder crops such as yams and bananas (US Geological Survey, 2016). Their plants are highly vulnerable to environmental shocks such as floods and drought. That is why they were significantly affected by the earthquake that occurred in that year(Beau et al., 2015). Today, many Haitians are living below the poverty threshold with more than 100, 000 of Haitian children undergoing malnutrition. The following analysis shows the impact that resulted from homelessness from the Haiti earthquake.

Infectious Diseases

            One of the most significant impacts that the disaster caused to the pre-school children is the outbreak of contagious diseases such as cholera. Most of the commonly reported infections in Haiti was cholera and some other non-cholera disorders which has been affecting children since the occurrence of the outbreak in 2010 (Barzilay, Schaad, Magloire, et al. 2013). The disease caused a serious issue of high child mortality and morbidity rates. Both non-cholera and cholera diarrheal diseases were in accompaniment with other respiratory problems like malaria and skin infections (Barzilay, Schaad, Magloire, et al. 2013). After the earthquake, it is when cholera erupted in Haiti after more than 100 years of the cholera-free country. Particularly in Artibonite district, the mortality rate was the highest due to lack of pre-existing immunity measures to cholera (Derby, Ber,  Leshem, et al. 2014). The figure below shows the health problems that the homeless kids faced after the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Nutrition and Food Security

            After the earthquake, Haiti was faced with food shortage and food security in general. According to the study which was done and focused on the nutritional status and food security in Haiti in 2012, 10% of children had underweight, 22% had stunted growth, and lastly, 4% had a wasting effect (Ager et al., 2011). Among the 13000 Haitian children aged 5 to 14, the non-restavek kids have the highest rate (68) of inaccessibility of clean food in comparison with the restavek kids with 53 percent(Barzilay, Schaad, Magloire, et al. 2013). According to data collected by the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) in 2015, the national stunting prevalence kids under the age of 5 was among the most impoverished families. Also according to the research, the earthquake affected most of the children in the post-earthquake period.

Food security was also another problem that was reported after the earthquake. Two months after the occurrence of the earthquake, 17% of the Port-au-Prince families said that their children were hangry and they were facing a severe food shortage (Ager et al., 2011). 25% reported that their children had skipped food for the past one month while 22 percent of the parents said that they had reduced the meal for their kids in the past month. For the school amenities and the household amenities, before the earthquake, it had reported having a negative correlation to get hungry while health, gender, and age had no direct relationship with going hungry (Ager et al., 2011). For the investigation of the skipped meals, it was found that the post-traumatic stress disorder, sense of security and household damage was the primary cause of the kids who skipped the meals. The presence of rural to urban migration of the 7^th-grade kids after the disaster was caused by increased food security due to a broader variety of foods available and increased social interactions.

Anemia

After the earthquake in 2010, some findings indicated that diet-related anemia and sickle-cell anemia was present in Haitian Children. Sickle cell anemia prevalence of HbSS and HbSC was one in 170 newborn babies which were twice the number of the African-American living in the US (Beau et al., 2015). This represented a significant burden of the disease. In the 2010 study, the incident of the diet-related anemia was 30%, and it was higher in children aged 6 to 11 years which recorded 51%. A program for deworming and supplementation was devised to help in regulating this epidemic (Beau et al., 2015). The parents reported that vitamin A supplementation and deworming were directly associated with the higher hemoglobin concentration in blood(Barzilay, Schaad, Magloire, et al. 2013). The Diet supplementation with ready-to-use supplement food reduced the chances of developing anemia by 28% as compared to controls.

Mental Health.

After the earthquake, there was a psychological impact that was left in the Haitian kids. The kids were traumatized, and they ended up developing PSTD symptoms due to the exposure they had with trauma. The children aged from 2 to 18 experienced a cultural shock since they did not get any psychological canceling after the disaster(Derby, Ber,  Leshem, et al. 2014). The PSTD symptoms were high in female children as compared to the boys.

                                                            Conclusion

The Haiti earthquake was one of the greatest disaster to have occurred in 2010. More than 1 million people were affected by the quake, and this left many deaths and injuries. Most of the population which was significantly affected are children and the youths. The health of the Haitian homeless children was concerned as the cholera epidemic struck the country. The economy of the country was also destabilized. Other impacts that affected the pre-school kids include mental health, anemia, sexual abuse, and violence as well as nutrition and food insecurity.

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