Health officials say the country’s epidemic is now a matter of `national security’ as the disease has started to spread in the earthquake-battered capital of Port-au-Prince
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
jcharles@MiamiHerald.com
PORT-AU-PRINCE — With 73 people hospitalized for cholera in this quake-battered capital, the epidemic is spreading and has officially made its way into Haiti’s largest city.
“We are on a rise,” said Christian Lindmeier, spokesman for the World Health Organization in Haiti. “The figures will climb.”
The cholera death toll now stands at 583, and 9,123 Haitians have been hospitalized with acute diarrhea, Haiti’s health ministry said Tuesday.
The increase comes amid fears that flooding from last week’s Hurricane Tomas will trigger more hospitalizations and even more deaths from the illness that is spread by drinking contaminated water.
Haitian government health officials acknowledged that the epidemic is evolving and has not yet peaked.
“This is now a matter of national security,” said Dr. Gabriel Timothee, director general of the Ministry of Health.
Cholera is now present in half of Haiti’s 10 geographical departments.
The spread of the disease to Port-au-Prince is worrisome because the overcrowded capital is not only home to most of the 1.5 million people displaced by the Jan. 12 earthquake and still living in tents or under tarps but also to hundreds of thousands of other people living without access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation.
Among those who have become ill are 115 people who sought treatment at a hospital in Cité Soleil, a teeming slum in the capital, Timothee said. Officials say they are still awaiting lab results to see if the patients have cholera or another illness that causes similar symptoms.
At least one of those who arrived at the Cité Soleil hospital has died.
Despite interviews with family members, health officials cannot say for certain the person did not travel to the lower Artibonite region where the cholera epidemic first broke out.
ON DEFENSE
In recent weeks, health officials have been working hard to keep cholera at bay in Port-au-Prince.
“The increasing numbers of cases of suspected cholera in our facilities throughout Port-au-Prince are certainly alarming,” said Stefano Zannini, head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti.
Haiti’s health ministry, which was the first to acknowledge the cholera outbreak, has taken the lead on informing the public about the waterborne infection.
But the collection of data from several sources and the perception that all diarrhea is a sign of cholera has added to confusion about how many victims there are.
“There comes a point where trying to judge an epidemic by the numbers is misleading,” said Imogen Wall, spokeswoman for the United Nations Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs.
“We know what this is. We know what it looks like. Those numbers are only the people who make it to hospitals and make it on to a statistical radar,” she said.
“As we see some numbers rise, it doesn’t necessarily, by itself, indicate that there is a significant increase in the number of cholera cases; only that the surveillance system that the Haitian government is employing with the support of the United States and international partners is actually improving,” said P.J. Crowley of the U.S. State Department.
Zannini said while the government’s continued public awareness campaigns on preventive measures are important, Haitians need to get immediate treatment at the first sign of illness.
But Haitians in some communities are wary.
A group of students in the city of St. Marc, where scores of Haitians have been treated at a hospital, for example, prevented officials from installing a cholera treatment center near a school.
In Gonaives, a flood-prone city in the Artibonite valley where the contaminated river blamed for the first cholera cases is located, officials are bracing for even more sickness.
“Cholera was bad before Tomas. Now with Tomas, things are getting worse,” said Drew Kutschenreuter, head of a Gonaives sub-office for the International Organization for Migration.
Kutschenreuter said a number of deaths may go unreported. “People are sick on Saturday and dead on Sunday night. There are a lot of people dying in their homes and then being buried,” he said.
In Archaie, a town 20 miles north of the capital, cases began showing up even before Hurricane Tomas battered Haiti’s shoreline last week and caused rivers to overflow and flood towns.
`WE KNOW’
Nurses at two hospitals kept records of patients arriving with severe vomiting, pain and acute diarrhea.
“We don’t need any tests. We know what it is. It is cholera,” said Marie Antoine, 38, opening a notebook with a list of hand-written names that had already topped 130.
As she went through the list, a vehicle careered into the courtyard. Jilnes Célestin, 61, gaunt and covered in diarrhea, was carried in by two men. He had been driven to the government hospital in the back of a tap tap, the colorful trucks used as public transportation.
Inside the hospital, as he received intravenous fluids, his common-law wife, Vesta Colin, 47, sat with a mask on her face and fear in her eyes. She said the only water he drank was well water and only he was sick.
She compared the disease to AIDS.
“At least with AIDS you have a fighting chance,” she said. “With this, it kills you in a matter of hours.”
Herald staff writers Trenton Daniel and Lesley Clark in Washington contributed to this report.
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COMMENT:HAITIAN-TRUTH.ORG
If this happened in the United States, and a commercial or governmental organization had dumped pollution into an important water supply, the legal/financial implications would be staggering!!
The Nepalese detachment of MINUSTAH has been caught dumping their cholera infected excrement into a local water supply that feeds into the Artibonite River system, a system from which millions draw their daily water needs.
Unfortunately, UN personnel, and the UN itself have immunity from Haitian prosecution, no matter what the charge might be.
Haiti is infected by cholera, as the direct result of UN negfligence or, as some suggest, a cynical, criminal attempt to create a situation that would allow cancellation of the November presidential elections. MINUSTAH has an interest in maintaining the Preval/Celestin mafia in place. MINUSTAH originally gave Preval the presidency, in 2006, by expanding his 23% vote to 51% in order to avoid a run-off, that would have seen him defeated.
MINUSTAH is a criminal organization with only one goal in mind – preservation of their ongoing mandate in Haiti.
Watch for pre-election violence that could be MINUSTAH generated…requiring MINUSTAH intervention – justifying their continued existence.