Five cases of the disease have been confirmed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s densely populated capital, as health officials fight to contain the disease, which has left over 250 people dead and thousands infected, according to the UN.
The UN Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a situation report that all those cases in the quake-torn capital involved people who had travelled from the affected Artibonite and Central areas.
“Of the five people with confirmed cases of cholera in Port-au-Prince, four were shown to have originated in Artibonite and one from the Central department,” OCHA said.
“These cases thus do not represent a spread of the epidemic because this is not a new location of infection,” the UN body added, saying it was “not unexpected.”
Dieula Louissaint, the regional health director, said 206 people had died throughout the Artibonite region. A further 14 people have died in central Haiti. “We cannot continue to treat cholera in this structure where we are also seeing other kinds of patients,” he said. “We need to establish specific treatment centres.” Also, more than 50 inmates at a prison in Mirebalais, just north of Port-au-Prince, have been infected, and three have died, officials said.
Charities have lept to aid Haiti as it battles a potentially widespread Cholera outbreak. The Red Cross network Saturday launched a rapid and coordinated response, putting personnel on the ground in the affected area, trucking in urgently needed medical supplies and water, and broadcasting emergency messages about cholera prevention via radio and text messaging, it said in an issued statement.
Canada, the US and other international aid agencies have begun setting up treatment centres and emergency water sanitation programmes. The water agency has doubled the amount of chlorine in drinking water, while soap, water purification tablets and information about the importance of washing hands are being spread.
The Haitian health ministry has asked the UN to take charge of distributing medication that is being sent by international donors, including 300,000 doses of antibiotics that have arrived.
The epidemic is believed to be have been caused by the contamination of the Artibonite river, which crosses the rural centre of the country and is used by thousands for washing and cooking.