The death toll from the cholera outbreak topped 500 today amid fears that the disease may have now reached the capital.
Dr Kara Gibson of the American charity Samaritan’s Purse told the international media that some people in the city’s biggest slum have symptoms of the disease after the Ministry of Health here said 501 persons had died from the disease so far.
It said that more than 7,000 people have been infected across the country with the disease which is caused by bacteria transmitted through contaminated water or food.
It causes diarrhoea and vomiting, leading to severe dehydration, but can kill quickly. It is treated easily through rehydration and antibiotics.
Dr. Gibson said that patients in the slum of Cite Soleil, in Port-au-Prince, have a more severe form of watery diarrhoea and fears that the disease will now spread even faster, despite humanitarian efforts to stem it.
“Now that it is in Cite Soleil, you can expect to see it just explode,” Dr Gibson said, adding that the” hospital in that areas is already at capacity”.
Meanwhile, Russia said it is ready to offer vaccine to Haiti to deal with the outbreak.
Russia’s chief doctor Gennady Onishchenko said that in Haiti there are no specialists who could administer the vaccine.
He said that while there are no Russian tourists in Haiti, but the neighboring Dominican Republic is popular with Russians. In this regard, he called on Russian citizens to refrain from trips to the Caribbean.
Over the weekend, the Haitian government and the United Nations appealed to donors for nearly US$19 million to cover urgent humanitarian needs.
There are also fears that the river which has been the source of the cholera epidemic is expected to overflow Monday after been swollen by heavy rains from Hurricane Tomas.
People along the river are being urged to evacuate with their livestock.
United Nations officials say engineers were forced to let water pass through a dam on the Artibonite River on Sunday. (CMC)
