This week Haiti was struck by a massive Cholera epidemic, as though the island and its inhabitants haven’t already faced enough this year. So far 250 have been registered as deceased, most of dehydration en route to medical centers. Over 3,000 people have visited medical sites. Many others have likely died without reaching a clinic or being counted.
I visited Hospital Saint Nicholas today in the town of Saint Marc in the Artibonite region today. The hospital is equipped with 125 beds, and currently has 1,000 cholera patients. Patients fill the hallways and lay on the ground. The other patients have been removed in an attempt to quarantine the site.
Medecins Sans Frontieres Communications Officer Claude Richard Accidat warned that isolating the epidemic may be impossible. “It is very difficult to stop the propagation of a Cholera epidemic in Haiti because we can’t control people coming and going, people visiting family in the North, or taking a bus to Port-au-Prince.” MSF is preparing in case the epidemic travels to the capital, which is still extremely fragile nine months after the earthquake. Conditions are ripe for the spread of the disease with 1.3 million still living in camps where sanitation has already proved problematic and diarrhea and fever are common.
