In Haiti, even helping is hard to do. It should be no surprise that a long-battled-for program to vaccinate Haitians against cholera has stalled due to suspicions of clandestine medical experimentation and old-fashioned political stonewalling.

The derailed program, according to NPR, has more than $400,000 worth of cholera vaccine sitting in refrigerated containers waiting for the Haitian National Ethics Committee to dispel allegations that the medicine is experimental and untested. The hold up came after a Haitian radio station called the program a “medical experiment on the Haitian people,” according to NPR.

“There's been concern that this vaccine was experimental, and that's been really just a confusion of timing,” NPR Health Correspondent Richard Knox reported from Port au Prince in March. “Last year when they originally proposed it, this vaccine was not approved by the World Health Organization. Now it is. But lately, people have said this is an experiment. So, they're trying to work that out and make it clear that it's really not an experiment. This is a certified safe and effective vaccine.”

Haitians can hardly be faulted for being overly cautious in accepting the vaccine at face value, especially considering the cholera—a disease unknown in the country for decades—ostensibly arrived with those trying to help. Still, with the disease’s death toll at more than 7,000 since the epidemic began in late 2010 and new cases spiking only one month into the rainy season, organizers wonder how much longer they can wait to begin.

“When it rains, everything mixes. It becomes a soup, which is a perfect breeding ground for every diarrheal disease, cholera included.” Vanessa Rouzier, a doctor working with the Haitian medical group GHESKIO, told NPR last week. “We know it's going to rain, we know it's going to flood, so we are afraid we are wasting precious time.”

Even assuming a quick and positive ethics committee review, the vaccine program is far from a panacea. The vaccine, which is to be administered in two locations, will only cover 100,000 Haitians. Even if organizers had access to all the vaccine worldwide, they could only inoculate about 2 percent of the Haitian population, according to NPR.

The inability to effect far reaching protection was one of the reasons Haiti’s past presidency opposed the program at its outset last year, along with fears that it would take the focus off treatment of the disease. The current administration has supported the program, but it—in typical Haitian style—has been paralyzed by the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Garry Conille. Until a new prime minister is appointed, the Haitian government is in a holding pattern, although the ethics committee is still studying the case, the Associated Press reported.

While frustrating for both aid agencies and Haitians—many of whom want the vaccine—the situation is representative of nearly two years of infighting and disagreement on how to approach treating, fighting, and eradicating the disease, according to an exhaustive examination of the epidemic in Sunday’s New York Times.

Most agree the lack of clean water and septic systems must be addressed before cholera becomes a thing of the past. But many are too focused on trying to treat the ill and dying to see that far into the future.

“Fixing the sanitation problem and giving access to potable water is the answer,” Rouzier told NPR. “But let's be realistic. When is that going to happen? And how many people can we allow to die in the meantime?”