"The vast majority of the Haitian people live in poverty. Between 1986 and 1994, with only brief exceptions, political violence was added to the worst poverty in the hemisphere, with the expected effects on the health status of the population. The restoration of constitution rule in 1994 was to be linked to massive international support for rebuilding public health infrastructure in Haiti. As of 2002, however, the U.S. government is orchestrating an aid embargo against the Haitian government; loans for public health, clean water, and education are all affected. Public health specialists focusing on Haiti agree that the past several years have been marked by a further decline in both Haiti's health infrastructure and in its people's health. By and large, Haitians living in Haiti have not enjoyed the fruits of twentieth-century scientific advances in medicine and public health and ill-conceived "aid" has complicated the picture considerably. Grounding our discussion in a broader review of the large-scale social forces that have shaped sickness and death in rural Haiti brings into relief the latest "hypocrisies of development.""(Au)