HAITI CHOLERA DEATH TOLL NEARS 7,000 - EXPERT
(AFP)
UNITED NATIONS — Nearly 7,000 people have now died from cholera in Haiti in an epidemic which has become one of the worst of recent decades, a top health official said Friday.
Jon Kim Andrus, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization, said that as of December, on top of the deaths, the Haitian government had reported more than 520,000 cholera cases with 200 new sufferers appearing each day.
Andrus said it was "one of the largest cholera outbreaks in modern history to affect a single country."
There are also 21,000 cases in the neighboring Dominican Republic where there have been 363 deaths, Andrus said at a briefing for the second anniversary of the January 12, 2010 earthquake which killed more than 225,000 people.
The cholera outbreak erupted in October, 2010 and has been widely blamed on a camp of UN peacekeepers from Nepal. Lawyers representing victims have demanded the United Nations pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation.
Andrus said Haiti needed a huge campaign to improve its supply of drinking water which various international institutions had estimated could cost between $746 million and $1.1 billion.
The international community has already given impoverished Haiti $2.4 billion in humanitarian aid in response to the quake.
Rebeca Grynspan, a UN under-secretary general at the UN Development Programme, said about 50 percent of the quake debris had been cleared -- some five million cubic meters of concrete and tangled steel.
Showing posts with label CHOLERA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CHOLERA. Show all posts
Friday, January 6, 2012
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
ARTICLE - HIGHER TEMPS + RAINS = CHOLERA
SCIENTISTS FIND TEMPERATURE, RAINFALL CAN PREDICT CHOLERA
(VOA) - By Art Chimes
Slight rise in temperature can double number of cases
Scientists studying temperature and rainfall patterns in areas that later had cholera outbreaks say small increases in warmth and wetness are followed by a surge in cholera cases a few months later. The information could give public health authorities a new tool to help battle this serious disease.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 100,000 people die from cholera each year, despite a vaccine which can prevent infection and simple treatment that works most of the time.
Advance notice of an outbreak might help in the battle against the acute diarrheal disease.
Now, an international team working in Tanzania has found that rising temperature and increased rainfall can signal a coming surge in cholera cases.
"What these authors from the International Vaccine Institute in [South] Korea, as well as the University of North Carolina, and the Ministry of Health in Zanzibar in Tanzania have shown," says cholera expert Peter Hotez, "is that a one degree increase in temperature can ultimately result in a two-fold increase in the number of cholera cases."
Hotez is president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, which published the research in its journal.
He says that previous research had established that the Vibrio cholerae bacteria can thrive in the gut of a tiny aquatic animal called a copepod.
"So the rationale for looking at temperature is because we know that increases in temperature can result in proliferation of these copepods and therefore create new niches for the Vibrio cholerae to replicate."
Cholera is typically spread through contaminated water, and with the bacteria proliferating when temperatures and rainfall increase, the number of infections also increases. As global temperatures have risen in the past decade, so have the number of cholera cases, according to the WHO. And Hotez says the nature of the outbreaks is changing, too.
"Now we're seeing long and very protracted outbreaks of cholera, like the one that's been occurring in Haiti and now the Dominican Republic. For instance, the epidemic in Zimbabwe lasted a year and caused 4,000 deaths, and we're probably seeing something of similar magnitude in Haiti.
"Lead author Rita Reyburn and colleagues point out that climate scientists are predicting a rise in global mean temperatures over the next century of between one and six degrees Celsius. The authors say that suggests the "possibility of increased cholera incidence in many resource-poor regions of the world."
(VOA) - By Art Chimes
Slight rise in temperature can double number of cases
Scientists studying temperature and rainfall patterns in areas that later had cholera outbreaks say small increases in warmth and wetness are followed by a surge in cholera cases a few months later. The information could give public health authorities a new tool to help battle this serious disease.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 100,000 people die from cholera each year, despite a vaccine which can prevent infection and simple treatment that works most of the time.
Advance notice of an outbreak might help in the battle against the acute diarrheal disease.
Now, an international team working in Tanzania has found that rising temperature and increased rainfall can signal a coming surge in cholera cases.
"What these authors from the International Vaccine Institute in [South] Korea, as well as the University of North Carolina, and the Ministry of Health in Zanzibar in Tanzania have shown," says cholera expert Peter Hotez, "is that a one degree increase in temperature can ultimately result in a two-fold increase in the number of cholera cases."
Hotez is president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, which published the research in its journal.
He says that previous research had established that the Vibrio cholerae bacteria can thrive in the gut of a tiny aquatic animal called a copepod.
"So the rationale for looking at temperature is because we know that increases in temperature can result in proliferation of these copepods and therefore create new niches for the Vibrio cholerae to replicate."
Cholera is typically spread through contaminated water, and with the bacteria proliferating when temperatures and rainfall increase, the number of infections also increases. As global temperatures have risen in the past decade, so have the number of cholera cases, according to the WHO. And Hotez says the nature of the outbreaks is changing, too.
"Now we're seeing long and very protracted outbreaks of cholera, like the one that's been occurring in Haiti and now the Dominican Republic. For instance, the epidemic in Zimbabwe lasted a year and caused 4,000 deaths, and we're probably seeing something of similar magnitude in Haiti.
"Lead author Rita Reyburn and colleagues point out that climate scientists are predicting a rise in global mean temperatures over the next century of between one and six degrees Celsius. The authors say that suggests the "possibility of increased cholera incidence in many resource-poor regions of the world."
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
CHOLERA
It has been cloudy and rainy here in Haiti the last 6 evenings. Not only is it difficult for the people living in the refuge camps but the rains also spread the cholera bacteria. Today Manu came home from school to tell me that 2 of the children in his class were in a cholera center being treated for cholera. This means that cholera is in our neighborhood. Tomorrow in our school program here at Coram Deo we will be educating the children again on cholera prevention/symptoms/treatments. We will also be sending a letter home with the students to advise the parents to be aware that cholera is in the neighborhood. Pray for Manu's 2 classmates, that they recover to full health and also for all those working in the medical field trying to contain the epidemic. Watch the video below. It almost seems like it is impossible to eradicate cholera when sewage is dumped haphazardly by everyone, including missions. The video below is proof of the endless cholera loop Haiti is stuck in because of lack of environmental controls.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)