The death toll of the cholera epidemic in Haiti has now reached 5,000.
An outbreak of cholera, a disease which had not been documented in Haiti for decades, was confirmed in Haiti in October 2010. According to figures released by Haiti’s Health Ministry, nearly 3,000 Haitians are still hospitalized with cholera after the outbreak infected around 300,000 people.
As of this week, health officials have documented more than 5,000 deaths in the nation due to the disease. Cholera is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The bacteria releases a toxin that causes increased release of water in the intestines, which produces severe diarrhea. It occurs in places with poor sanitation, crowding, war and famine.
The outbreak is believed to have been caused by the contamination of rivers with excrement. The strain itself is typical to one in South Asia around the Ganges Delta of India and Bangladesh. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the epidemic will remain in the country for some years, and many resources will be necessary for its total eradication.
These numbers support findings from a study published in March in the journal Lancet and conducted at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and Harvard Medical School which predicted that the cholera epidemic in Haiti this year will be far worse than United Nations’ projections, which had estimated 400,000 cases of the diarrheal disease over the course of the epidemic. The study suggests that there could be nearly twice that number — perhaps 779,000 cases of cholera — between March and November of this year alone.
Epidemiological models estimate that just a 1 percent reduction in the number of people forced to drink contaminated water would avert more than 100,000 cases of cholera this year and prevent some 1,500 deaths. Vaccinating about 10 percent of the population would spare about 900 lives. –torrance stephens ph.d.
