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Haitian Aids Epidemic Summary

Decent Essays

Question 3 Paul Farmer says that the “Haitian AIDS epidemic…[is] best understood by taking the long view” (152). What he means by this is that you must look at the whole picture, you have to go beyond the surface to understand how and why it became an epidemic. You must at least be familiar with the Haitians history to understand their response to the epidemic, and how it spread all over Haiti.
Haiti was invaded by the Unites States Marines Corps in 1915, and quickly had a convention to create a new government and constitution for the people. According to Farmer, one of the articles in the new constitution,
“Abolished Dessalines's most famous law, which forbade foreign ownership of land. Many North American companies scouted Haiti for land for new plantations of rubber, bananas, sugar, sisal, …show more content…

Haitians were displaced from their farms, homes and original jobs because of this. They then had to find work in the new factories for very little money. Many Haitians went to the United States to find work. There they were discriminated against in many ways. They were not able to get jobs because people were scared of getting AIDS. Some of them could not speak in their own language, so that they could be seen as Jamaicans instead of Haitians. Most of the blame for the discrimination is placed upon the CDC. In March 4, 1983, they showed the public the four groups that were at the highest risk. These groups were “Four-H Club," a…reference to homosexuals, Haitians, hemophiliacs, and heroin-users” (211). They admitted that many people in these groups were not at risk for AIDS, but they decided to release the group names anyway. They decided to do this without doing any testing. This caused many people to discriminate against the Haitians.
The United States had blamed the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the Haitians, simply because many of them practice voodoo. Paul Farmer states

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