HAITI: Fears mount in quake-ravaged Haiti as United Nation's report says cholera outbreak set to spread

Record ID: 644654

  • Title: HAITI: Fears mount in quake-ravaged Haiti as United Nation's report says cholera outbreak set to spread
  • Date: 14th November 2010
  • Summary: PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI (NOVEMBER 13, 2010) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF DISPLACED CAMP CHAMPS-DE-MER NEAR PRESIDENTIAL PALACE VARIOUS OF UN PERSONNEL CORDONING OFF AREA OF PORTABLE TOILETS WHERE BODY WAS FOUND ONLOOKERS (SOUNDBITE) (Creole) RESIDENT OF DISPLACED CAMP JUDE JEAN-PIERRE SAYING "Something like this happened yesterday, a woman died in her tent. Today, we don't know what happened, but we are scared for our lives. It can happen to anyone of us in this camp. Right now we don't have training on how to approach a body and we have kids that live around the camps." VARIOUS OF UN PERSONNEL IN AREA WHERE BODY WAS FOUND INSIDE PORTABLE TOILET
  • Embargoed: 29th November 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Haiti
  • Country: Haiti
  • Topics: International Relations,Health
  • Reuters ID: LVABAWDSXISHPLFH81DHP9Q91OXD
  • Story Text: United Nations personnel working in Port-au-Prince cordoned off a section in the resettlement camp Champ-des-Mer on Saturday (November 13) after a body was found inside a portable toilet, an apparent victim of the deadly cholera epidemic that has already killed 800.
    The discovery comes one day after the United Nations said in a report that up to 200,000 Haitians could contract cholera as the outbreak is set to spread across the battered Caribbean nation of nearly 10 million, the United Nations said on Friday.
    That would be double the 100,000 cases during a huge cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe between August 2008 and July 2009, which killed 4,287 people. The U.N. forecast of the number of cases in Haiti was based partly on the Zimbabwe toll.
    Onlookers gathered as personnel from MINUSTAH blocked the portable toilets where the body was found. Jude Jean-Pierre, who lives in the resettlement camp, told Reuters Television many were "scared for their lives."
    "Something like this happened yesterday, a woman died in her tent. Today, we don't know what happened, but we are scared for our lives," he said. "It can happen to anyone of us in this camp. Right now we don't have training on how to approach a body and we have kids that live around the camps."
    The death toll from the outbreak rose to 800 on Thursday and at least 11,125 patients have been hospitalised since the outbreak began more than three weeks ago.
    Haiti's epidemic was aggravated by flooding caused by Hurricane Tomas this month and added to a humanitarian emergency in the wake of the massive earthquake in January which killed more than 250,000.
    The quake made some 1.5 million people homeless, and living conditions in the western hemisphere's poorest state leave people extremely vulnerable to the disease, which is spread by dirty water or food.
    The entire population is at risk because no one has immunity to cholera.
    The country has all the classic risk factors for the disease -- overcrowded camps for displaced quake survivors, a scarcity of safe drinking water, improper elimination of human waste and the contamination of food during or after its preparation.
    Cases have been confirmed in five of the 10 departments, including the capital Port-au-Prince, with "high probability of spread through all the country within the coming months", according to the U.N. strategy document.
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