tagged w/ Haiti
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Health minister in Haiti says 501 have died from the Cholera outbreak, with fears the disease might now be in the countries capital Port-au-Prince. The number of estimated infected is now 7,000.
However, Health workers are saying the figures for infection could be higher from areas cut off from Hurricane Tomas.
"There was flooding in Leogane, Les Cayes, Jacmel and Gonaives, while many mountain towns have been cut off by flooded roads and landslides.
Although the hurricane passed without destroying the tented camps in and around the capital - which house about 1.3 million survivors of January's earthquake - there were fears over the increased risk of cholera."-BBCHealth minister in Haiti says 501 have died from the Cholera outbreak, with fears the... more
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Hurricane Tomas lashes already devastated Haiti
By the CNN Wire Staff
November 5, 2010 5:35 p.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* NEW: Rain stops falling in the capital
* Reports tell of destroyed houses, downed trees and flooded rivers
* Aid workers are already struggling to keep up with a cholera outbreak
* Tomas could dump 15 inches of rain over Haiti and cause flash flooding and mud slides
PART ONE…
Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- Already devastated this year by a killer earthquake and a deadly cholera outbreak, Haiti felt the brute force Friday of Hurricane Tomas, which could dump up to 15 inches of rain and trigger flash floods and mud slides.
The hurricane's punishing rain and wind pounded Haiti as the storm churned offshore.
As of 5 p.m. ET, the storm's center was about 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Guantanamo, Cuba, and about 70 miles (110 kilometers) southwest of Great Inagua island in the Bahamas, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida. Earlier Friday, Tomas had passed within about 140 miles (230 kilometers) of Port-au-Prince.
In the westernmost tip of Haiti, which juts into the Caribbean Sea and is closest to the hurricane, there were reports from the town of Jeremie of destroyed houses, downed trees and flooded rivers, said Marie-Eve Bertrand, communications manager for CARE in the nation.
Also, she said, CARE workers near the coastal city of Leogane reported the area has been inundated with nearly 5 feet of water. Flooding from a nearby river had entered some tent encampments and temporary shelters, Bertrand said.
Tomas was also felt in Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital, but the worst of the storm appeared to have passed there after rain pounded the city all night. By Friday afternoon, the rain had stopped falling.
"The skies have gotten a little cloudier, but people are out and about," said Andrea Koppel, director of international communications with the American Red Cross, who spoke to CNN from Port-au-Prince. "The music is blaring from some of the communities here."
Relief worker Roseann Dennery of Samaritan's Purse was near Cabaret, about 20 miles north of Port-au-Prince, on Friday morning, touring camps that hold some of the 1 million people left homeless by January's 7.0-magnitude earthquake, which killed some 250,000 people.
"It's almost eerie," she said. "It's rainy, it's dark and there's really not a lot of movement."
The few people moving from tent to tent were wrapped in sheets and cloth to provide some protection against the constant rain, she said. The ground was soaked and some low-lying areas had minor flooding.
Some people rode out the storm in open-air community centers with supposedly sturdy roofs, she said. But many just huddled in their tents, waiting for the wind and rain to pass. Most didn't have anywhere else to go.
"A lot of them do not have families or relatives," said Dennery.
She said her agency, an international Christian relief organization, has evacuated 30 staff members from Leogane out of fear of mud slides there.
Michael Dockrey, the director in Haiti for the International Medical Corps, also expressed his deep concern Friday.
"Particularly," he told CNN, "with mud slides that can cut off whole communities. We have pre-positioned medical supplies, tents, tarps and staff in areas that we know will be isolated."
Aid workers already were struggling to keep up with the cholera outbreak, which has killed nearly 450 people and hospitalized about 7,000. The bacterial disease causes diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to deadly dehydration within hours.
"It's obviously stretched us all real thin," Dockrey said. "We could certainly use more help ... as can all the other responders."
The hurricane will only make matters worse.
"Even if Tomas only brushes Haiti, it may exacerbate the epidemic, facilitating the spread of the disease into and throughout metropolitan Port-au-Prince, where a third of the population remains homeless and in camps," the International Organization for Migration said.
Some Haitians scurried Friday morning through the rain-pelted streets of Port-au-Prince, looking for somewhere to seek shelter, reported CNN en Espanol's Diulka Perez. They were told to go to churches or the homes of friends and family, but there are significantly fewer churches or homes still standing after January's massive earthquake.
There was also no public transportation available to take people anywhere, Perez reported.
The problem is compounded, she said, because there's no central source of information. Haitians are having to rely on word of mouth to obtain information.
Nor are Haitians eager to leave their tent shelters, because the government cannot guarantee they will have someplace to return to after the storm passes.
CONTINUED…
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRYI374io5SbNB1AzBdSkPrB2aAipfwE7XM1sh4wqMqiQ--wWY&t=1&usg=__YkjBCL-JrfetZLzbC3uiDunMGxQ=Hurricane Tomas lashes already devastated Haiti
By the CNN Wire Staff
November 5,... more
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As tropical storm Tomas speeds toward Haiti, threatening to turn into a hurricane before it passes just west of the island Friday morning, some 1.3 million people are virtually trapped in Port-au-Prince’s flimsy tent cities.
In the countryside, hundreds of thousands more Haitians still live in tents following the 7.0 earthquake the leveled the capital and surrounding areas in January.
Authorities have advised anyone living in makeshift camps to seek refuge in sturdier buildings, but many say they don't have that option.
“The majority of people have nowhere to go,” says Stefan Reynier, the head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Léogâne, 18 miles west of the capital. “Those people will not be protected.”
This is despite the fact that more than 100,000 homes in Port-au-Prince sit vacant and in need of only minimal repairs since an earthquake rocked the country in January, according to aid organizations in the country. Each home could be repaired with only days worth of work and several thousand dollars in supplies, they saAs tropical storm Tomas speeds toward Haiti, threatening to turn into a hurricane... more
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Heavy rain has started to fall in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince as a powerful storm approaches, threatening earthquake survivors living in camps.
Link : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11696626Heavy rain has started to fall in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince as a powerful... more
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...The confirmation of the death toll came amid a UN investigation into samples of a suspected sewage spill leaking behind a Nepalese peacekeeping base in Haiti towards an infected river system.
UN officials appeared to take away samples from the site on Wednesday, following accusations that the spill could be the source of the cholera outbreak,
Vincenzo Pugliese, a mission spokesman, confirmed on Wednesday that the UN team was testing for cholera - the first public acknowledgement that the 12,000-member force is directly investigating allegations its base played a role in the outbreak, the Associated Press news agency reported.
Al Jazeera's Sebastian Walker, reporting from Port-au-Prince said the UN is "categorically denying" that peacekeepers were the cause of the outbreak.
"But you know, that river, from that base, flows into the town of Mirebalais," he said.
"In Mirebalais there have been many cases of cholera. There's 50 at the local prison there, there have been cases throughout that department - that's the central department. That river then runs on into the Urbanite, which is the heart of where the cholera has been raging over the past few days."
Suspected Nepal connections
The Nepalese mission strongly denies its base was a cause of the infection.
Pugliese said civilian engineers collected samples from the base on Friday which tested negative for cholera and the mission's military force commander ordered the additional tests to confirm. He said no members of the Nepalese battalion have the disease.
But local politicians, including a powerful senator and the mayor of Mirebalais, are pointing the finger at the Nepalese peacekeeping base, which is perched above a source of the Meille River, a tributary to the Artibonite River on Haiti's central plateau.
Cholera is endemic to Nepal, which suffered outbreaks this summer. A recent article in the Japanese Journal of Infectious Diseases about outbreaks in 2008-09 said the strain found by researchers was "Vibrio cholerae O1 Ogawa biotype El Tor", the same strain found in Haiti.
More in the link.
Of course we had to expect something like this. An explosion of cholera doesn't just HAPPEN, there has to be some cause....The confirmation of the death toll came amid a UN investigation into samples of a... more
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YOUNG ARTISTS FOR HAITI
Just surfing through the internet I found this video. I found this video really touching and appealing. We might have forgotten the Haiti tragedy, but the aftermaths are still very much existing and we still need to do our bit to help the needy people. Please check out this video-
http://paragonist.blogspot.com/2010/11/young-artists-for-haiti.htmlYOUNG ARTISTS FOR HAITI
Just surfing through the internet I found this video. I found... more
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Cholera deaths in Haiti rise as Hurricane nears
Official: Haiti cholera deaths rise above 330 as hurricane approaches
By the CNN Wire Staff
October 30, 2010 8:54 p.m. EDT
Doctors receive hundreds of Cholera patients per day at the hospital in L'Estere on October 26, 2010.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* The death toll from a cholera outbreak is 337
* Another 200 cases are suspected
* Tomas is expected to near Haiti on Thursday
Are you in Haiti? Please share your photos and videos with CNN iReport.
(CNN) -- The death toll from a cholera outbreak in Haiti has risen to more than 330, and officials believe Hurricane Tomas may worsen the situation as it approaches, a U.N. spokeswoman said Saturday.
The number of confirmed cholera cases has climbed to 4,764, with 337 deaths, said Imogen Wall, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Haiti, citing information provided by the Haitian government. Those numbers represent the people that were able to make it to the hospital, she said.
Another 200 cases are suspected in the nation's West Department, or province, she said.
U.N. peacekeepers said Thursday that preliminary tests on a suspected source of the cholera outbreak were negative.
The U.N. mission in Haiti is testing waste and sewage water at the back of a Nepalese military base that is part of the U.N. operations. The first tests showed no signs of cholera, officials said earlier this week.
The mission said it "has taken very seriously the allegations that sewage water coming from latrines at the back of the Nepalese military base in Mirebalais could be the source of the cholera outbreak in Haiti."
Cholera cases up worldwide
Suspicions about the Nepalese base arose from reports that water was collecting at the back of the base. It was believed to be overflow from the latrine or a septic tank.
U.N. engineers examined the base and concluded that the standing water was not from the latrine of septic tank, but from a soak pit that receives water from the kitchen and the shower area, the U.N mission said.
"This soak pit is located three meters from the latrines, hence misleading passers-by into believing that the soaked ground close to latrines is caused by the overspill of human waste," it said.
All human waste from the camp is collected in seven septic tanks that are emptied out and discharged in a local landfill as authorized by the local government, the United Nations said.
The agency also noted that all 710 Nepalese soldiers underwent medical tests, and tested negative for cholera, before deployment to Haiti earlier this month.Cholera deaths in Haiti rise as Hurricane nears
Official: Haiti cholera deaths rise... more
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Hundreds of Haitian protestors marched in the city of Mirabelais, toward the NATO base which housed Nepalese nationals and demanded they leave the country.
As of Friday morning, the disease left 330 dead and 4700 hospitalized.
Experts have not yet been able to identify the origin of the epidemic, but several are guessing that the disease arrived from the outside. Up until this month, not a single case of cholera has been diagnosed in Haiti since the middle of the 20th century, according to Claire-Lise Chaignant, head of the global task force on cholera control at the World Health Organization.Hundreds of Haitian protestors marched in the city of Mirabelais, toward the NATO base... more
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Poor, battered and homeless, Haitians face new killer
By Richard Allen Greene, CNN
Cholera epidemic sparks fears in Haiti
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Children are suffering the most as cholera spreads
* They're weak, frail and scared, an aid worker says
* Aid agencies urge people to drink only clean water and wash their hands often
* Even regions not hit by the earthquake are suffering now
(CNN) -- Battered by a devastating earthquake, left for nearly a year without real homes, promised aid that failed to arrive, the people of Haiti now face a new killer, and the littlest children are among the hardest hit.
"The heart-wrenching piece of all of this is the children, who we have seen are suffering the most," aid worker Roseann Dennery said from the desperately poor Caribbean island nation.
She doesn't flinch in describing the effects of cholera; the water-borne disease has claimed at least 259 lives so far and is spreading quickly.
Children "are coming in with hard-to-control diarrhea and vomiting. Their little lives are frail, weakened. And so scared," she said in an iReport.
"Robens Jeune and his 2-year-old son came into the clinic. His little boy looked up with wide eyes and sat on the cot, scared and suffering. We started an IV and sat with him and his father to quiet his crying," said Dennery, who is with a Christian aid organization called Samaritan's Purse.
"Today, he just started throwing up," the boy's father told Dennery as he placed his hand on his son, Frantzley.
"I was on the way to the Saint-Marc hospital and someone told me that there was a clinic here, closer to home. So we came. And he has perked up, he is feeling better. I am hopeful he can live through this," Jeune told the aid worker at a rehydration clinic her group set up in Villard, near the center of the outbreak.
In theory, cholera should not be hard to control or to treat -- which is why aid organizations are racing to tell Haitians how to avoid it.
"First of all, drink clean water -- bottled, treated or boiled water," said Abdikadir Hassan, head of the Mercy Corps office in Mirabalais, downriver from the center of the outbreak.
The aid agency is telling people to "wash their hands every time they do something -- go to the toilet, eat. If you have enough water, wash the food before you eat. We're trying to give them soap and water treatments."
Mercy Corps is not waiting for Haitians to come to them for help.
"We put speakers on a van," Hassan said by phone from the town of Mirabalais. "We're going out to the community, we're at the market, we're at the schools."
They don't get to everyone in time.
When Hassan got to the local prison, he found it had 50 cases of cholera, of whom two had already died.
Next he went to the local hospital, where there were 800 cases, of whom 10 have died, he said.
"It started with children and then adults," he said. "In the past few days we have seen more children."
Mirabalais is a textbook case of how shock waves have rippled out from the earthquake since it struck in January.
It's on the central plateau in the center of Haiti, Hassan explained.
"It was not affected by the earthquake, but it received families that were," he said -- about 16,000 people made homeless came to stay with family members in the area.
More than nine months later, about half those people are still there, known officially as internally displaced persons and living with host families and relatives, Hassan said.
"We don't have IDP (internally displaced person) camps where I am," he said
"They are staying in villages, they are staying in towns -- but they are staying in... very small houses with eight or 10 people, houses that normally have four or five people," he said.
Those are exactly the kind of conditions that make it easy for disease to spread, and that's what worries aid workers.
"It would be irresponsible to plan for anything but a considerably wider outbreak," said Nigel Fisher, U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Haiti.Poor, battered and homeless, Haitians face new killer
By Richard Allen Greene, CNN... more
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Hey Billy! Remember Haiti? Can’t the United Nations fire this guy? Put Sean Penn in charge!
latindispatch
A suspected outbreak of Cholera in central Haiti has killed at least 138 people and sickened hundreds more in an overcrowded hospital.Hey Billy! Remember Haiti? Can’t the United Nations fire this guy? Put Sean Penn... more
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11614639
The first cases of cholera have been detected in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, raising fears over the outbreak that has killed more than 200 people.
UN spokeswoman Imogen Wall told the Reuters news agency the five cases were "very quickly diagnosed and isolated".
She said they had been infected in the main outbreak zone - the Artibonite region - and had subsequently travelled to the capital, where they fell ill.
This meant Port-au-Prince was "not a new location of infection", she noted.
Earlier, Ms Wall said the prospect of cholera in the city, where more than a million survivors of January's earthquake are living in tents, was "awful".
Those in the camps are highly vulnerable to the intestinal infection, which is caused by bacteria transmitted through contaminated water or food.
Cholera causes diarrhoea and vomiting leading to severe dehydration, and can kill quickly if left untreated though rehydration and antibiotics.
'No safety cordon'
With 2,674 cases of the disease reported, health officials have been trying to contain the outbreak in Artibonite and Central Plateau.
They said they had stepped up disease prevention measures and surveillance at the tent camps, and sent medical teams north to treat those infected so they did not travel to the capital to seek help.
Ms Wall said officials were also identifying sites in Port-au-Prince for tent clinics, where patients...http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11614639
The first cases of cholera... more
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A cholera epidemic spread in central Haiti on Friday as aid groups rushed doctors and supplies to fight the country's worst health crisis since January's earthquake. Nearly 200 deaths had been confirmed and more than 2,000 people were ill.
The first two cases of the disease outside the rural Artibonite region were confirmed in Arcahaie, a town that is closer to the quake-devastated capital, Port-au-Prince.
Officials are concerned the outbreak could reach the squalid tarp camps where hundreds of thousands of quake survivors live in the capital.
"It will be very, very dangerous," said Claude Surena, president of the Haitian Medical Association. "Port-au-Prince already has more than 2.4 million people, and the way they are living is dangerous enough already."
The Ministry of Health confirmed 194 deaths and 2,364 cases of cholera, said Imogen Wall, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
"It's concentrated in Artibonite right now and we're doing our best to keep it that way," Wall said.
Dozens of patients lay on the floor awaiting treatment at the St. Nicholas hospital in the seaside city of St. Marc, some of them brushing away flies on mattresses stained with human feces.
One of them, 55-year-old Jille Sanatus, had been there since his son Jordany brought him Thursday night. A doctor was struggling to stick a needle into his arm.
"He's completely dehydrated, so it's difficult. It's hard to find the vein," said Dr. Roasana Casimir, who had been working nearly without rest since the outbreak began two days earlier.
Casimir finally penetrated the vein and fluid from an IV bag began to trickle in, but half an hour later the father of 10 was dead. Two hospital employees carried the body to the morgue behind the hospital and placed it on the ground for the family to reclaim for a funeral.
Sanatus' son said the family had been drinking water from a river running down from the central plateau region. Health Minister Alex Larsen said Friday that the river tested positive for cholera.
Wall said the sick patients and the contagious remains of the dead were insufficiently quarantined.
"Part of the problem has been people are moving around a lot, and there hasn't been proper isolation in place at the clinics," she said.
The sick come from across the desolate Artibonite Valley, a region that received thousands of refugees following the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed as many as 300,000 people and destroyed the capital 45 miles (70 kilometers) south of St. Marc. Most of the new arrivals have been taken in by host families.
In addition to the two cholera cases confirmed by the health ministry in Arcahaie, the International Medical Corps said it was investigating other possible cases in Croix-des-Bouquet, a suburb of the capital. Radio reports also said there were two dozen cases of diarrhea on Gonave island.
Cholera was not present in Haiti before the earthquake, but experts had warned that conditions were ripe for disease to strike in areas with limited access to clean water.
"You cannot say it is because of the earthquake, but because of the earthquake the situation here requires a high level of attention in case the epidemic extends," said Michel Thieren, a program officer for the Pan-American Health Organization.
cont.A cholera epidemic spread in central Haiti on Friday as aid groups rushed doctors and... more
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A cholera outbreak has hit the region along the Artibonite River, between the cities of Saint-Marc and Mirebalais.
Following the outbreak of acute diarrhea in the Artibonite region of Haiti, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical teams—including doctors, nurses, and logisticians—immediately traveled to the affected areas along the Artibonite River, between the cities of Saint-Marc and Mirebalais.
According to Haitian health authorities, at least 138 people have died and 1,500 cases of cholera have been confirmed.
In collaboration with national health authorities, MSF is providing human resources and technical and material support to health structures in Saint-Marc. Teams are involved in treating patients and implementing necessary measures to prevent the outbreak from spreading. MSF is sending additional medical materials and experienced staff to the affected areas.
MSF is not able to confirm either the cause or the exact bacterial type of the outbreak. The Artibonite region was not affected by the January 12, 2010, earthquake.
MSF Activities in Haiti
In Haiti, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has more than 3,000 Haitian and international medical and non-medical staff providing assistance to the population. They run seven private, free of charge, secondary-level care hospitals and support two Ministry of Health structures in Port-au-Prince, accounting for nearly 1,000 hospital beds in the capital city. These facilities provide emergency, trauma, obstetrical, pediatric, maternal, and orthopedic care services. Mental health care and treatment and counseling for victims of sexual violence are also provided by MSF.
MSF is also in the process of opening a new emergency obstetrical hospital with 100 beds in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince. Outside the capital, MSF supports Ministry of Health hospitals in the cities of Leogane and Jacmel with nearly 200 beds of patient capacity. MSF opened a private 120-bed container hospital in Leogane in October.
From January 12 to September 30, MSF has treated more than 339,000 people, performed more than 15,700 surgeries; and delivered over 9,900 babies. MSF also provides primary medical care and relief supplies to displaced persons living in various camps in Port-au-Prince through mobile and fixed clinics, and is carrying out water-and-sanitation services to displaced persons in the Cite de Soleil slum.A cholera outbreak has hit the region along the Artibonite River, between the cities... more
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(CNN) -- Haitian Health Ministry officials have informed the World Health Organization that 138 deaths are a part of a fast-moving cholera outbreak north of Port-au-Prince, a U.N. official said.
Imogen Wall, the U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman in Haiti, said that in addition to the deaths, 1,526 cases are also part of the outbreak. All the cases have been reported in the Lower Artibonite region, north of Port-au-Prince, she said.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/21/haiti.cholera/index.html(CNN) -- Haitian Health Ministry officials have informed the World Health Organization... more
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ST. MARC, Haiti, Oct. 22, 2010
Haiti: Suspected Cholera Outbreak Kills 135
Aid Groups Rush in Supplies as Deadliest Outbreak Since Earthquake Hits Refugees; 1,000 Said to be Infected
Photo: A sick child in central Haiti hooked up to an IV waiting for treatment, Oct. 21, 2010. (Operation Blessing International)
Victims await treatment at a medical facility in St. Marc, northern Haiti, amid an epidemic that has claimed at least 135 lives over the last few days, Oct. 21, 2010. (Getty Images)
(CBS/AP) At least 135 people have died in a suspected cholera outbreak, and aid groups are rushing in medicine and other supplies Friday to combat Haiti's deadliest health problem since its devastating earthquake.
The outbreak in the rural Artibonite region, which hosts thousands of quake refugees, appeared to confirm relief groups' fears about sanitation for homeless survivors living in tarp cities and other squalid settlements.
"We have been afraid of this since the earthquake," said Robin Mahfood, president of Food for the Poor, which was preparing to fly in donations of antibiotics, dehydration salts and other supplies.
Many of the sick have converged on St. Nicholas hospital in the seaside city of St. Marc, where hundreds of dehydrated patients lay on blankets in a parking lot with IVs in their arms as they waited for treatment.
Catherine Huck, deputy country director for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the Caribbean nation's health ministry had recorded 135 deaths and more than 1,000 infected people.
"What we know is that people have diarrhea, and they are vomiting, and (they) can go quickly if they are not seen in time," Huck said. She said doctors were still awaiting lab results to pinpoint the disease.
David Darg, international disaster relief director for Operation Blessing International told CBS News on Thursday it was the worst outbreak of disease he had seen since the earthquake, and many lying outside of the hospital were children.
The president of the Haitian Medical Association, Claude Surena, said the cause appeared to be cholera, but added that had not been confirmed by the government.
"The concern is that it could go from one place to another place, and it could affect more people or move from one region to another one," he said.
Cholera is a waterborne bacterial infection spread through contaminated water. It causes severe diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to dehydration and death within hours. Treatment involves administering a salt and sugar-based rehydration serum.
No cholera outbreaks had been reported in Haiti for decades before the earthquake, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Haitian officials, including President Rene Preval, have been pointing to the lack of severe disease outbreaks as a hard-to-see success of the quake response.
With more than a million people left homeless by the disaster, however, experts have warned that disease could strike in the makeshift camps with nowhere to put human waste and limited access to clean water.
At the hospital, some patients including 70-year-old Belismene Jean Baptiste said they got sick after drinking water from a public canal.
"I ran to the bathroom four times last night vomiting," Jean Baptiste said.
The sick come from across the Artibonite Valley, a starkly desolate region of rice fields and deforested mountains. The area did not experience significant damage in the Jan. 12 quake but has absorbed thousands of refugees from the devastated capital 45 miles south of St. Marc.
Trucks loaded with medical supplies including rehydration salts were to be sent from Port-au-Prince to the hospital, said Jessica DuPlessis, an OCHA spokeswoman. Doctors at the hospital said they also needed more personnel to handle the flood of patients.
Elyneth Tranckil was among dozens of relatives standing outside the hospital gate as new patients arrived near death.
"Police have blocked the entry to the hospital, so I can't get in to see my wife," Tranckil said.
The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince issued an advisory urging people to drink only bottled or boiled water and eat only food that has been thoroughly cooked.ST. MARC, Haiti, Oct. 22, 2010
Haiti: Suspected Cholera Outbreak Kills 135
Aid... more
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Nearly nine months after the earthquake, more than a million Haitians still live on the streets between piles of rubble. One reason: Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the United States promised Haiti for rebuilding has arrived.Nearly nine months after the earthquake, more than a million Haitians still live on... more
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