At least 142 dead in Haiti cholera outbreak

More than 1,500 infected in recent days in the country's worst medical crisis since the Jan. 12 earthquake

ST. MARC, Haiti — At least 142 people have died in a cholera outbreak, and aid groups are rushing in medicine and other supplies Friday to combat Haiti's deadliest health problem since its devastating earthquake.
The World Health Organization said the virulent diarrheal disease, which had affected 1,526 people as of late Thursday, would be the first cholera epidemic in a century in the disaster-prone Caribbean nation, already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
“This outbreak is likely to get much larger, given our experience with cholera epidemics in the past, particularly in a population that has no protective immunity,” Dr. Jon K. Andrus, Pan American Health Organization said during a briefing Friday afternoon.
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..More than 60 patients have been treated at the Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, the largest hospital in the central region, said Ian Rawson, the hospital's managing director, in an e-mail to msnbc.com Friday.
"None are from the immediate area, mostly adult men, few women or children," reported Rawson, who confirmed that teams from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had visited the site.
The cholera patients are being separated from others, he said. Most appear to live near the area surrounding the Artibonite River, and most patients have reported drinking water from the river.
The Red Cross and other humanitarian agencies were rushing doctors, medical supplies and clean water to Saint-Marc in the Artibonite region, the outbreak zone north of Port-au-Prince. No cases were immediately reported in the crowded capital.

.One humanitarian worker who visited the main hospital in Saint-Marc called it a "horror scene."
"The courtyard was lined with patients hooked up to intravenous drips. It had just rained and there were people lying on the ground on soggy sheets, half-soaked with feces," David Darg of the U.S.-based humanitarian organization Operation Blessing International, wrote in an account published on the Thomson Reuters Foundation's AlertNet website.

Darg said villagers in the countryside around Saint-Marc were begging for clean water.

The outbreak in the rural Artibonite region, which hosts thousands of quake refugees, appeared to confirm relief groups' fears about sanitation for homeless survivors living in tarp cities and other squalid settlements.
"We have been afraid of this since the earthquake," said Robin Mahfood, president of Food for the Poor, which was preparing to fly in donations of antibiotics, dehydration salts and other supplies.
The region is Haiti's central breadbasket, a starkly desolate area of rice fields and deforested mountains, and had received tens of thousands of fleeing survivors from the January 12 quake. The earthquake killed up to 300,000 people and injured thousands more, traumatizing the long-suffering population. The rural area did not experience significant damage in the quake.
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said the government was very worried about the disease spreading to the quake survivors' camps in Port-au-Prince.
Haitian President Rene Preval had confirmed cholera was the cause of the fast-spreading, acute diarrhea that overwhelmed hospitals in central Haiti in recent days with weakened, dehydrated patients. Many of the victims died in a matter of hours.
Most of the sick have converged on St. Nicholas hospital in the seaside city of St. Marc, where hundreds of dehydrated patients lay on blankets in a parking lot with IVs in their arms as they waited for treatment.

Thony Belizaire / AFP

A patient is helped outside St. Nicolas Hospital in St. Marc, north of Port-au-Prince.
"It's the severity of the outbreak that preoccupies us, and then the unconfirmed but reported high number of dead ... all of that is being investigated," Thieren told Reuters.

Thimote said the victims ranged in age, but the young and the elderly appeared to be the most affected, he added.
.The president of the Haitian Medical Association, Claude Surena, said people must be vigilant about hygiene and wash their hands frequently to slow the spread of the disease.
"The concern is that it could go from one place to another place, and it could affect more people or move from one region to another one," he said.

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Cholera is a waterborne bacterial infection spread through contaminated water. It causes severe diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to dehydration and death within hours. Treatment involves administering a salt and sugar-based rehydration serum.
Health Minister Alex Larsen urged anyone suffering diarrhea to make their own rehydration serum out of salt, sugar and water to drink on the way to a hospital.
Michel Thieren, a program officer for the Pan-American Health Organization, said hospitals in the region have enough IV treatments for now but stocks will need to be replenished.
"Most of the cases can be done with oral treatment, but here we have a significant number that require IV treatment," he said.
More than a million homeless
With more than a million people left homeless by the disaster, however, experts have warned that disease could strike in the makeshift camps with nowhere to put human waste and limited access to clean water.
At the hospital, some patients including 70-year-old Belismene Jean Baptiste said they got sick after drinking water from a public canal.

"I ran to the bathroom four times last night vomiting," Jean Baptiste said.

Trucks loaded with medical supplies including rehydration salts were to be sent from Port-au-Prince to the hospital, said Jessica DuPlessis, an OCHA spokeswoman. Doctors at the hospital said they also needed more personnel to handle the flood of patients.

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Elyneth Tranckil was among dozens of relatives standing outside the hospital gate as new patients arrived near death.

"Police have blocked the entry to the hospital, so I can't get in to see my wife," Tranckil said.

The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince issued an advisory urging people to drink only bottled or boiled water and eat only food that has been thoroughly cooked.


Commentaire
Une tragédie horrible dans un pays abandonne à lui-même!