I received a message from my friend in Haiti, Vilmer Paul, about whom I’ve written several blogs. Vilmer’s message prompts me to request:

While we are hunkered down in our mansions, give thanks for what you have, and please remember to pray for folks in Haiti.

Here’s some of what Vilmer writes:

My conclusion: There is no suitable solution for Haiti apart from home confinement. However, confinement is simply impossible to apply in Haiti. The people live from day to day on the street and in the street.

The social distancing advocated can only be the affair of a few privileged. In other words, in Haiti, the Coronavirus will worsen the social divide by exacerbating disparities, in particular access to basic necessities (health care and food)…

Confinement, applied to the letter, would cause more deaths in the population than the epidemic itself. In other words, the remedy would kill more than the disease.

Here’s an article in a Haitian publication saying the same thing. And this article in the Miami Herald questions the wisdom of the Haitian government declaring victory and returning to work too early.

I don’t know the solution or even what we in the US can do to help…other than join them in prayer.

In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5.18, NKJV)

They desired only that we should remember the poor, the very thing which I also was eager to do. (Galatians 2.10, NKJV)