By David T. Jones on February 11, 2010
Washington, DC…Even before the seminal January 12 earthquake, Haiti was
in trouble. It was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with
per capita income of less than $2 per day ($660/year) where 1 percent
of the citizens held half of Haiti's wealth. Even before the
earthquake, statistics indicated that only a third of the population
could access electricity and only 11 percent had piped water. No city
had a sanitation system; life expectancy at 61 years was the
hemisphere's lowest, and the UN Human Development Index placed it 149
of 182 countries with all below it being African states. The best and
brightest of its citizens long ago escaped...
