Fears, however, that cholera would spread rapidly through the overcrowded settlements never materialized. Aid workers say this was probably because of the treated water distributed in the camps.
When the earthquake struck in January 2010, Jacqueline Syra was nine months pregnant with her third child. Her house near the sprawling slum of Cite Soleil collapsed, she says, killing her husband.
Syra, along with tens of thousands of other people, moved on to an abandoned military airport known as La Piste.
Syra never expected that three years later, she'd still be living on the runway.
"We are not living well in the tents," she says. "Sometimes men get in here and attack me or rob my things."
Her shack is a patchwork of fraying tarps that are tied together with blankets and strung over a skeleton of mismatched sticks. Two motorcycle tires on the roof keep the cloth from flapping in the wind. She uses the front of an old portable toilet as the door to her shelter. There's no electricity, and she cooks on the dirt floor.
Syra shares this shelter with her three children.
"I don't sleep well, I don't eat well," says the rail-thin, 49-year-old mother. "I was a fat woman, and look at me now. I lost a lot of weight because I cannot sleep or eat well here."
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