We’ll stop cholera spreading to earthquake camps, says Haiti

Fear in her eyes: a woman covers her mouth as she waits to be treated at a hospital
12 April 2012

The spread of cholera among earthquake survivors in Haiti can be contained, health officials said today.

The outbreak has killed 250 people and left more than 3,000 seriously ill, raising fears that it could reach the sprawling slums with their poor hygiene and sanitation.

Five deaths were reported in the capital, Port-au-Prince, but government officials said all the cases were contracted in the rural areas where the disease broke out last week.

"It's not difficult to prevent the spread to Port-au-Prince," said health ministry director Gabriel Timothee. He said it could be halted by tightly limiting movement of patients and careful disposal of bodies.

If efforts to keep cholera out of the camps fail, "the worst case would be that we have hundreds of thousands of people getting sick at the same time", said Claude Surena, president of the Haiti Medical Association. Cholera can cause vomiting and diarrhoea so severe it can kill from dehydration in hours.

Robyn Fieser, of Catholic Relief Services, said she was confident that aid groups and the Haitian government will respond efficiently should an outbreak occur in the camps. But she stressed that the challenge of preventing its spread is "immense".

"There are proven methods to contain and treat cholera, so we know what we're dealing with. The biggest challenge is logistics, that is, moving massive amounts of medicine, supplies and people into place to treat them and prevent the disease spreading," she said.

Aid workers, who are handing out soap and water purification tablets, say the risk is magnified by the extreme poverty faced by the thousands of people displaced by the earthquake on January 12, which killed as many as 300,000.

Camp dwellers risk catching the disease by failing to wash their hands, or using standing water to wash fruit and vegetables.

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