Plagues,
Pestilences and Diseases
First Dominican cholera death suspected as cases soar
by Staff Writers
Santo Domingo (AFP) Dec 26, 2010
As cholera infections soar in the Dominican Republic, health
authorities probed Sunday a possible first fatality from an
outbreak that has killed thousands in Haiti.
Twenty-three new infections brought the total to 105 in Haiti's
more developed neighbor, Health Minister Bautista Rojas said,
adding that the suspect death was an unnamed individual in the
south of the country.
"We had unprecedented growth (of the disease) in the southern
provinces of San Juan and Azua," Rojas told reporters. Among the
victims, 11 have been admitted to health clinics and the rest have
been discharged.
Haiti, where the Caribbean nation's first cholera outbreak in over
a century has killed over 2,600 people since it surfaced in
mid-October, and the Dominican Republic share a porous
376-kilometer (234-mile) border.
Health officials in the Dominican Republic have introduced new
measures to try to slow the advance of the disease from Haiti.
The Santo Domingo government forbids the use of water from the
Artibonite River that traverses most of the island of Hispaniola
and is thought to have been the source of the cholera epidemic.