PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Quake-hit Haiti and its aid partners fought on Friday to stem a cholera epidemic that has killed nearly 200 people and sickened more than 2,000, and officials expect to see more cases before it is contained.
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| Patients and families wait outside St. Nicolas Hospital on October 21, 2010 in St. Marc, 96 Km in the north of Port-au-Prince, amid a cholera epidemic that has claimed 135 lives and infected 1,500 people over the last few days. (AFP) |
One humanitarian worker who visited the main hospital inSaint-Marc called it a “horror scene.” “The courtyard was lined with patients hooked up to intravenous drips. It had just rained and there were people lying on the ground on soggy sheets, half-soaked with feces,” David Darg of the U.S.-based humanitarian organization Operation Blessing International, wrote in an account published on the Thomson Reuters Foundation's AlertNet website. Darg said villagers in the countryside around Saint-Marc were begging for clean water.
Although the main outbreak area was north of Port-au-Prince, which bore the brunt of the Jan. 12 earthquake, humanitarian agencies were on high alert to prevent the disease from spreading to crowded survivors' camps in the capital.
The cholera epidemic was the worst medical emergency to strike the poor, disaster-prone Caribbean nation since the devastating earthquake that killed up to 300,000 people.
It was also the first cholera epidemic in Haiti in a century, the World Health Organization said.
But no confirmed cases were reported in Haiti's rubble-strewn capital, where 1.3 million quake homeless are living in tent cities.
Health teams were closely monitoring the survivor camps and oral rehydration liquids were being prepared for quick use.
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