PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – An epidemiologist at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the death toll from cholera in Haiti has reached 800 as the United Nations (UN) yesterday renewed its call for more financial assistance to battle the outbreak.
Speaking by telephone to delegates attending a medical conference in the United States, Dr Ezra Barzilay said that while on Monday there had been 640 confirmed deaths, the figure reached 800 on Thursday.
Barzilay said he was also concerned about the risk of transmission to the United States and other countries even as the United Nations appealed for nearly US$164 million to fight the cholera outbreak.
UN spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said that unless the funds were provided “all our efforts can be outrun by the epidemic”.
She said the disease had so far infected at least 11 125 people in five of Haiti’s ten districts.
Aid agencies are battling to contain cholera in the capital Port-au-Prince, amid fears it will spread through camps housing more than one million earthquake survivors.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the funds would be used to bring in more doctors, medicines and water purification equipment.
“We absolutely need this money as soon as possible,” Byrs said. The World Health Organisation said yesterday it did not expect the epidemic to end soon.
“The projection of 200 000 cases over the next six to 12 months shows the amplitude of what could be expected,” said spokesman Gregory Hartl.
He said that the current fatality rate of 6.5 per cent was far higher than it should be.
“No one in Haiti has experienced cholera before, so it is a population which is very susceptible to the bacteria,” he said. “Once it is in water systems it transmits very easily.”
The disease is spread by contaminated drinking water or food, but is treatable with oral or intravenous rehydration and antibiotics.
(CMC)
