ARTICLE -- Haiti confirms scores of deaths due to cholera outbreak

Haiti's president and medical officials have confirmed that an outbreak of cholera has killed scores of people north of the capital Port-au-Prince.  The victims suffered diarrhoea, acute fever and vomiting. More than 1,500 people were infected, officials said.

President Rene Preval said his government was taking steps to ensure the disease did not spread further.

There are fears the outbreak could reach the camps around the capital for survivors of January's earthquake.
The quake killed some 250,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless. Tens of thousands of people are still living in crowded tent cities with poor sanitation and little access to clean drinking water.  Cholera is an intestinal infection caused by bacteria transmitted through contaminated water or food. The source of contamination is usually the faeces of infected people.  It causes diarrhoea and vomiting, leading to severe dehydration, and can kill quickly if left untreated. It is easily treated though rehydration and antibiotics, however.  Hospitals are 'overwhelmed'

Original article can be found:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11608551

"I can confirm it is cholera," President Preval told Reuters news agency.
"Now we are making sure people are fully aware of precautionary measures they have to take to prevent contamination"

 

Hospitals and clinics in the affected areas have been overwhelmed.

 

The director general of the health department, Dr Gabriel Thimote, said the worst-affected areas were Douin, Marchand Dessalines and areas around Saint-Marc, about 100km (60 miles) north of Port-au-Prince.

Local hospitals were "overwhelmed", and a number of people were being evacuated to clinics in other areas, he added.  At one point on Thursday, hundreds of people were laid out in the car park of St Nicholas hospital in Saint-Marc, with intravenous drips in their arms to treat dehydration, until it began to rain and they were rushed inside.  Some patients said they drank water from a public canal, while others said they bought purified water.  "I ran to the bathroom four times last night vomiting," 70-year-old Belismene Jean Baptiste told the Associated Press.

Another man said three of his relatives had died within a matter hours.  The victims range in age, but the young and the elderly appear to be the worst-affected.  David Darg, a medical relief worker in Haiti, told the BBC he had visited an area near Saint-Marc which - according to local residents - was the source of the outbreak.
"After visiting the hospital and meeting some of the medical staff, they were able to pinpoint where these cases were originating from so we headed out to a very rural area," Mr Darg told the BBC's World Today programme.

 

He said it was "an area that's popular for rice production".
"There's a lot of water in that area particularly," added Mr Darg. "We started heading out along narrow roads lined with villagers begging for water, because by now they'd been seeing people dying in their communities and knew not to drink water from the river, which ordinarily would have been their main source of water: they drink water straight from the river."

There were fears of a cholera outbreak in the aftermath of January's earthquake, but none emerged.
This is the first time in a century that cholera has struck the Caribbean nation, the World Health Organization said.

The Artibonite department was not badly damaged in the earthquake but thousands of people who lost their homes have moved into camps or are living with relatives there.

"We have been afraid of this since the earthquake," said Robin Mahfood, president of Food for the Poor.
The agency was preparing to airlift donations of antibiotics, oral dehydration salts and other supplies to the affected areas.