Prensa Latina:Port-au-Prince, Apr 17 (Prensa Latina) At least 11 people died in northern Haiti last week by a renewed outbreak of the epidemic of cholera, reported the authorities Tuesday.
In accordance with the mayor of the town of d Anse-Rouge (region of Artibonite), Celareste Honorat, the number of deceased reported in seven days went higher than those who died last month, when five new victims were registered.
Honorat said that the outbreak is because of “the difficult and complex situation” of the inhabitants in that rural areas.
Besides the lack of access to drinking water and latrines, those people suffer food insecurity because of the drought affecting the region, said the local news agency Alterpresse in its statements.
The Haitian Public Health Ministry announced last week a vaccination campaign in which about 100,000 volunteers will receive two oral dosages.
As Haitian Public Minister Gabriel Timothée said, the situation of the disease is particularly worrying in the northern region.
More than 7,000 people died from cholera in Haiti during 2011 and another 520,000, more than five percent of the population, were affected this year, although the epidemic was contained since the beginning of this year.
Haitian human rights organizations denounced the previous month that several humanitarian entities abandoned the country in a critical moment in the evolution of the disease, given the proximity of the rainy season.
An investigation carried out by the US Center for the Control and Prevention of Illnesses said that the epidemic was imported by Nepalese personnel of a base of the Mission of the United Nations for the Stabilization of Haiti (Minustah).
Another study carried out at the begining of 2011 by a French investigator also concluded that the origin was due to the presence of the Nepalese Blue Helmets who supposedly defecated in the proximities of the Artibonite River.
That river, one of the most important in Haiti, is used by thousands of people to wash, drink, fish or take a bath.
Just two percent of the 10 million inhabitants of this country has access to drinkable water, while most of the population do not use latrines or carry out their physiologic necessities in other places as the rivers or the proximities of the houses.
A group of Haitian lawyers, representatives of more than 5,000 sick people of cholera, threatened in December to take the United Nations to court if they do not respond to the compensation demand presented by them.
Since the beginning of the year dozens of Haitians come out to the streets of Port-au- Prince to protest against the presence of the Minustah and in demand of improvements of the sanitary conditions for those sick of cholera.
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