Haiti Cases Of Cholera Triple, Doctors Without Borders Says

By TRENTON DANIEL, Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- The number of cholera cases seen in the Haitian capital has jumped about threefold in recent weeks, an official with a foreign aid group said Monday.

Pascale Zintzen, deputy head of mission for Doctors Without Borders, said the group's four treatment centers in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area have handled as many as 850 cases in a single week lately. That compares with about 250 cases a week more than a month ago.

The rise is largely attributed to the second rainy season of the year, when showers and floods cause the waterborne disease to spread freely in the crowded and unsanitary capital, Zintzen said.

One cholera treatment center in the densely packed Port-au-Prince area of Martissaint has 90 beds for patients but is almost out of space, she said.

"We are not far from it," Zintzen said by telephone. "We are worried about what we see at the moment."

Despite the jump in cases, the weekly number is still far below what foreign aid groups saw in the initial peak last November after the disease surfaced a year ago.

Health care workers for Doctors Without Borders treated as many 4,600 patients in one week at its treatment centers in the Port-au-Prince area and about half that number in late May, when the year's first rainy season kicked in.

There had never been any documented cases of cholera in Haiti until a year ago, when a U.N. peacekeeping battalion from Nepal likely introduced the disease.

Cholera is caused by a bacteria that produces severe diarrhea and is contracted by eating or drinking contaminated food or water. The disease is relatively easy to treat if people can get help in time, but Haiti's poverty sometimes makes it difficult to find immediate help.

The epidemic has killed more than 6,200 people and sickened nearly 440,000 others, according to Haitian health officials.

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Comments

[CITYTERRACE63]

06:16 PM on 10/11/2011

It is time to leave Haiti and let let nature take its course. There is no hope for that island nation. It is a broken down corrupt nation where the people still practice Voodoo. The world has spent billions in foreign aid over the last 3 decades and little has changed. Basicly it is money thrown down the drain. Quarantine that side of the island so if you go in you cannot come out and discontinue all immigrant admissions to the United States from Haiti.

[jdollinter]

11:50 AM on 10/11/2011

Chile, New Zealand and Japan are all quickly rebuilding from their devastating earthquakes
while the residents of Haiti continue to sit on the curb with their hands out begging 3 years later. After receiving $300 Millions in aid from the US and Musicians who raised $Millions in fund drives they still don't have clean water or a reliable electrical grid. Isn't it time the Haitians made an effort to do for themselves instead of relying on foreign help while sitting on their hands doing nothing?