Plagues, Pestilences and Diseases
Haiti cholera epidemic death toll hits 1500, will affect hundreds of
thousands, says UN official
Outbreak is spreading faster than predicted and could last a year in
the earthquake-hit country
* Maev Kennedy and agencies in Port-au-Prince
*
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 November 2010 14.08 GMT
Haitian girl with cholera A Haitian child with cholera at a clinic in
Port-au-Prince. Photograph: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
The cholera epidemic in Haiti is spreading faster than predicted and is
likely to affect hundreds of thousands of people, according to a senior
United Nations official.
Since it broke out in mid-October, the waterborne disease has killed at
least 1,500 people as it spread through crowded housing and the camps
and makeshift shelters in which almost a million people are still
living after the earthquake in January.
Nigel Fisher, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Haiti, said the
epidemic had now spread to all 10 of the country's provinces and could
last up to a year. He said the real death toll could be closer to
2,000, because there was little reliable data from remote areas.
"It's going to spread," he said. "The medical specialists all say that
this cholera epidemic will continue through months and maybe a year at
least, that we will see literally hundreds of thousands of cases."
He also believes that the true current number of cases is up to 70,000,
rather than the official estimate of 50,000, Reuters reported.
He told a UN news conference by video link that the World Health
Organisation's experts were now revising their estimates upwards. They
had predicted 200,000 cases within six months but now believed that
figure could be reached in half the time.
Aid workers needed to "significantly ratchet up" their response, he
said, including going through faith groups to distribute water
purifying tablets, and increasing the number of treatment centres.
But he admitted that the challenge of opening new centres was
complicated by local fears that it was the UN itself that brought the
infection to the island.
At least two people were killed and dozens injured in clashes last week
between UN troops and protesters, who claimed that the source of the
outbreak was contaminated water near the base of UN peacekeepers from
Nepal.
Edmond Mulet, the head of the UN peacekeeping mission, said all tests
had proved negative, and there was no scientific evidence the Nepalese
were implicated.
The earthquake hit on 12 January, centred 16 miles west of the capital
at Port-au-Prince, and affected an estimated three million people. The
true casualty figures may never be known, but the Haitian government
estimates that 230,000 were killed, 300,000 injured, and at least a
million left homeless after 250,000 homes and 30,000 commercial
buildings collapsed or suffered major damage.