The Lancet
Jun 11, 2016 Volume 387 Number 10036 p2351-2478 e29
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/issue/current
.

Editorial
Dear Mr Ban Ki-moon
The Lancet
We have greatly admired your leadership as Secretary-General of the UN. Over your 10 years heading the world’s most important international organisation, you have played an exemplary part in strengthening the global health agenda—championing awareness of women’s and children’s health, global warming, and humanitarianism. But there is one issue that concerns us deeply.

In 2010, UN soldiers from Nepal were deployed to help after Haiti’s devastating earthquake and cholera contaminated sewage was discarded from their camp into the country’s major river. This triggered the largest cholera outbreak in the world, leaving more than 30 000 Haitians dead and more than 2 million affected.

6 years later a cholera epidemic still rages—14 000 new cases and 150 deaths are reported this year alone. The UN has yet to accept responsibility for introducing cholera into Haiti, despite two investigations establishing these facts.

We applaud the considerable work that the UN has done since 2010 to improve hygiene standards for peacekeepers and support immunisation campaigns. But we are distressed by reports that less than 20% of the funds pledged by the UN after the outbreak to eradicate cholera have been raised.

Calls for you to do more are intensifying. 2000 letters were sent to the UN by Haitians with stories of hardship. Diaspora leaders have urged the UN to install water and sanitation infrastructure to control cholera and to compensate victims. Failing to accept the UN’s responsibilities sets a poor example for the Haitian government to assume theirs, they say. Your own human rights advisers have implored you to respond. Instead, the UN continues to say it is immune from these claims.

It is disappointing that the UN’s silence has forced the matter into the US courts. The UN has enormous power to act. But its power to ignore is what prevails here.

We hope you can address this issue. Please endorse the facts. Please acknowledge the injustice. Please apologise for the indifference. Responsibility is not about vengeance, but about accountability from which needed reparation and reconciliation can flow. The UN has long emphasised the need for accountability—we urge you to make this a final act in your celebrated career as Secretary-General.