Forgetting Haiti

In Haiti, 230,000 people were killed during the earthquake in 2010.  This is a massive number, but quickly after the disaster, the media and the world moved on, quickly going back to living normally, as thousands in Haitians kept living their lives in mass chaos and destruction. Therefore, I pose the question, how is it possible that our world has essentially forgotten Haiti? 

The situation in Haiti post earthquake was described by one aid worker as being like a "story from the Holocaust."  There were "thousands of bodies everywhere" and the situation was "true madness."  In the aftermath of the earthquake, bodies actually had to be carried into "mass graves" by dump trucks because they were polluting the streets.  Countries from all over the world pitched in to help the situation.  Rescue teams were sent in.  Money was pledged to the government. Information about the earthquake could be found all over the media and was the hot topic throughout the world. However, in a matter of months, it seems like the whole tragedy has been forgotten within the media and even individuals’ minds.  I, for one, haven't seen an article in the newspaper regarding Haiti in months.  However, the situation over there is hardly improving.

Why have we forgotten this issue?  What makes this problem less drastic as time goes on? I believe little has changed about this situation and therefore, we need to pay the same attention to it as we did last January.  Yet I do have an explanation for why this issue doesn’t get much attention anymore. Studies have been done that conclude that humans find mass death less thought provoking (in a sad way) and easier to cope with than a single or a few deaths.  In the Haitian case, there were so many victims of the earthquake that we have trouble fully understanding and relating to the problem.   As time passes, we become less interested in the Haiti earthquake because we were never really been able to understand what 230,000 deaths meant.  Our human brains just don't have the ability to grasp this horror and to allow us to be as emotional as if one or two people died.  I know that when a few people are killed in an accident I feel worse for them and their families that when thousands are killed.  I simply cannot feel as emotional and sympathetic with such a large scale of destruction.

The other factor that led this story to be forgotten is the need for constant new material in the media world.  When newspapers and television shows air, they want to hook their audiences by supplying them with captivating new information.  If a newspaper or television program had covered the story in Haiti for ten months, we would have become bored with their material and business would drop.  As morally important as it is to keep the world interested in aiding the victims of Haiti, the media realistically does not want to spend any more time covering Haiti stories unless they can write new information.

The current conditions in Haiti need to be improved, but many people in the world are not interested enough anymore to spread this idea.  Human brains are not able to understand and sympathize with mass amounts of death. The media world needs to cover new stories every few weeks. Therefore, the world has forgotten about the devastation in Haiti.