Haiti sounds alarm following cholera death in capital
Cholera arrived in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince Tuesday with 73 recorded cases and a first death raising fears the epidemic could spread through the city's sprawling slums, which house more than a million earthquake survivors.
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"The epidemic of cholera, a highly contagious disease, is no longer a simple emergency, it's now a matter of national security," the director of the Haiti's health ministry, Gabriel Thimote, told a press conference.
Deaths across the Caribbean nation soared to close to 600 and Haitian authorities fear the bacterial disease, which is spread by contaminated drinking water or foods, could spread like wildfire in the capital and in tent cities elsewhere.
Port-au-Prince has hundreds of makeshift camps where an estimated 1.3 million people displaced by January's earthquake live in squalid and cramped conditions, sharing limited water supplies to cook and wash.
"This is ripe for the rapid spread of cholera. We have to be prepared for it," said top UN health official Jon Andrus.
Claude Surena, president of the Haitian Doctors' Association, said that in addition to the one confirmed death in the capital, two more patients had died with cholera-like symptoms.
Haitian health ministry chief of staff Ariel Henry said there was no large-scale outbreak in Port-au-Prince at the moment but warned, "it's coming".
The country's first cholera epidemic in more than half-a-century surfaced in the Artibonite Valley in central Haiti on 21 October, compounding the misery for a nation trying to recover from January’s devastating earthquake.
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