L’épidémie de choléra en Haïti: histoire d’un fiasco des Nations Unies et de la persévérance d’un (collectif) chercheur français: Tribune à partir de la lecture de « Choléra; Haïti 2010-2018, histoire d’un désastre » par Renaud Piarroux, Cnrs – 2019

SAt a time when the Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc around the world, it is certainly useful to take a step back epidemiologically. Reading Renaud Piarroux’s book on his experience of fighting the cholera epidemic in Haiti between 2010 and 2018 is rich in lessons. It shows the fiasco and the wanderings of the United Nations system and some of its executives, but also the narrow vision of French diplomats and global health officials. But the book is also valuable for understanding the academic functioning of global public health, in the image of the contemporary Covidian disaster: biomedical public health, oriented towards certain diseases in particular, without an interdisciplinary vision and with its share of excesses, abuse and scientific clientelism. Students and young researchers should be able to use this analysis to change the situation…in the hope that they will be given space.