De seneste uger er antallet af koleratilfælde i Haiti tredoblet. Det er en ny sygdom i det fattige land. Indtil for et år siden var der ikke registreret ét tilfælde af kolera. Det er sandsynligt, at nepalesiske deltagere i FNs fredsbevarende styre, bragte smitten til det caribiske land.
Pascale Zintzen, deputy head of mission for Doctors Without Borders, MSF, said the group’s 4 treatment centers in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area have handled as many as 850 cases in a single week lately. That compares with about 250 cases a week more than a month ago, informs the Haitian newspaper Haitian Times.
The rise is largely attributed to the second rainy season of the year, when showers and floods cause the waterborne disease to spread freely in the crowded and unsanitary capital, Zintzen said.
One cholera treatment center in the densely packed Port-au-Prince area of Martissaint has 90 beds for patients but is almost out of space, she said.
Despite the jump in cases, the weekly number is still far below what foreign aid groups saw in the initial peak last November after the disease surfaced a year ago.
The epidemic has killed more than 6,200 people and sickened nearly 440,000 others, according to Haitian health officials.
