Haiti cholera outbreak hits Port-au-Prince
As Haiti fights a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 200 people and now spread to the capital, Oxfam tells Channel 4 News it has ramped up its presence and “everyone is on high alert”.
Oxfam’s Julie Schindall, who has been in Haiti since March, said Oxfam has mobilised extra specialists to set up water, sanitation and hygiene programmes for the charity’s assigned zone – a habitat of 100,000 people.
Ms Schindall told Channel 4 News that with the source of the outbreak still unknown, aid workers have to move quickly to contain it.
She fears the spread of cholera could be spurred on by the celebration of a public holiday in Haiti at the beginning of November. “There’s a major festival over the November 1st holiday period – when lots of people will be moving around. We have to move very very quickly.”
Ms Schindall said the government, which is leading the response, has the holiday “on their radar”.
The Ministry of Public Health is reporting more than 2,500 cases of cholera in the worst medical emergency since the devastating earthquake in January that killed up to 300,000 people. UN officials said today that the death toll has now topped 200, with five cases confirmed in the capital of Port-au-Prince.
However, a spokesman for the UN said: “They were very quickly diagnosed and isolate. This is not a new location of infection”.
Ms Schindall said Oxfam met with officials from the UN, the Haiti government and other non-government organisations (NGOs) on Friday to co-ordinate the response to the outbreak – which is centred on the Lower Artibonite region, north of the capital Port-au-Prince.
The worst-affected areas are in Douin, Marchand Dessalines and around Saint-Marc in the Artibonite region.
Doctors fear the outbreak could spread to the crowded tent camps in the capital, which are home to around 1.3 million people left homeless by the January 12 quake.
A vast aid infrastructure has been set up in the wake of the earthquake, said Ms Schindall, which has helped to co-ordinate aid responses.
However, after President Rene Preval’s confirmation that cholera was spreading, aid agencies stepped up their efforts.
Ms Schindall told Channel 4 News: “Everyone is on high alert. You could tell just from the amount of traffic in the city – it’s very busy. I don’t want to scaremonger but it could get worse and the logistics are enormous.”
She said Oxfam’s first step would be to distribute clean water and to prevent the spread of dehydration. “Cholera kills fast, but it is treatable – preventing it is the best way of treating it,” she added.
Cholera is not transmitted by person-to-person contact but through contaminated water, food and body fluids.
While this is the first outbreak of cholera in a century, the authorities have urged people not to panic, saying the deadly dehydration caused by cholera could be easily treated by drinking boiled water mixed with sugar and salt.
Dr Jon Arbus, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organisation, said: “One of the simplest things they can do is frequent handwashing. Personal hygiene. That does wonders. Safe water, chlorine is being provided so to take advantage of those measures that will ensure that anything ingested whether it be water or food is properly prepared and that the source of the water is safe and adequately treated.”