ARTICLE - A SOLVABLE PROBLEM IN PESTEL

A SOLVABLE PROBLEM IN PESTEL
(Peoria Star Journal) - By John Carroll, MD

When wandering around the mountains of Haiti and you are a blan (foreigner) it is easy to get disoriented and confused.

But we need to try and keep things as simple as possible to make sense of the Haitian mountains and the cholera that hides inside.

Right now there is a significant amount of cholera in the mountains of the Commune of Pestel. Pestel is located on the northern coast of the southern peninsula of Haiti.

During the last ten days we have documented cholera morbidity and mortality by talking to Haitian health care workers in the mountains of Pestel and have reviewed their written records. We have documented cholera cases in many different sections of Pestel. And these results have been published.

And we are caring for very sick patients now with cholera from four sections of Pestel. These patients are very sick. They need IV fluids and will die without it. And there are new patients each day in little CTU’s that have been recently set up in Desvereaux, Tozia, Pela, and Pavion.

And when the rains start in two months, science and common sense tell us that the volume of cholera patients will rise quickly up here in the mountains.

Rivers and springs have been identified and tested for cholera from these sections during the last 10 days.

And during the the last few days it has been impressed on me that Desvereaux has had many cases of cholera and the name of the water source that creeps through this community is La Clotte.

Every Haitian health care worker I know is pointing a finger at this water source.

So it makes sense to me that La Clotte may be one of the big problems in this area. People are drinking this water, bathing in it, and doing their wash in it.

If La Clotte comes back positive for V.cholera, would it make sense to concentrate here with our experts and figure out a way to clean it up and secure it before the rainy season starts? Shouldn’t this be our number one priority?

I am not trying to say that is all that needs to be done to stem the oncoming waves of cholera this year. But if that water source was stabilized, it seems like a good start. If there was less cholera in La Clotte, there would be less infections, and less transmission of the cholera bacteria. People would need to practice safe hygiene, but that could be done with aquatabs and chlorox as it is in the village of Pestel. CTC’s and CTU’s would still be important, but would not be as important if the cholera burden (number of microbes) was less or non existent from La Clotte.

Pestel doesn’t seem to have cholera now according to the chief Haitian doctor here and the Haitian CTC nurses agree.

If La Clotte is the main culprit and could be attcked hard now before the rains start, could this not be part of a model for all of rural Haiti like Dr. Mike McDonald from the University of Maryland has been suggesting all along?

The cholera problem here in the Pestel community just seems to be solvable. In fact it has to be solved.