ABROAD

island of Hispaniola (Figure 1), has recently attracted the attention of the U.S. health community as the source of a large influx of refugees into the United States. These refugees are leaving a country where the life expectancy in 1978 was 47.5 years and infant mortality was 150 per thousand live births (1). Haiti is one of the poorest coun-tries in the Western hemisphere, with a per capita income of $304 in 1980 (2). Eighty-five percent of the rural pop-ulation is believed to live below the absolute poverty level (3). This poverty contributes significantly to Haiti's en-demic nutritional deficiencies, tuberculosis, typhoid fe-ver, bacterial and protozoal dysenteries, and malaria. Within 60 years of Columbus ' 1492 landing on Hispan-iola, the indigenous Carib Indian population had largely disappeared. Slaves were imported from many parts o