UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations yesterday announced plans to establish an expert scientific panel to investigate the origin of the cholera outbreak in Haiti that has killed more than 2 000 people since the first case was detected in late October.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that details of the independent panel, which will include world-renowned microbiologists and epidemiologists, among others, will be made public as soon as possible.
“We want to make the best efforts to get to the bottom of this outbreak and get the answers the people of Haiti deserve,” he said in his year-end speech.
Since it emerged in late October, the disease has spread throughout much of Haiti, killing more than 2 000 people and sickening at least 100 000 more.
The UN says up to 650 000 people in Haiti could get cholera over the next six months.
Haitians have blamed the UN peacekeepers from Nepal as the source of the disease that emerged here after a century. A French epidemiologist, who studied the outbreak on behalf of the Haitian and French governments, came to the same conclusion.
(CMC)
