Haiti Cholera Update #8

Via the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), as of 3 November 2010, MSPP reports, there were in Haiti 6,742 hospitalized cases of cholera and 442 deaths since the outbreak began. This represents a crude mortality rate of 6.6%. Cholera promptly treated has a crude mortality rate of 1-2%. Cholera is now found in five départments: Artibonite, where the outbreak began, and Centre, Nord, Nord-Ouest, and Ouest.

Tropical Storm Tomas has begun to affect Haiti’s southwest peninsula. However the latest forecasts have some good news: the storm has veered further west than expected, and it appears the heaviest rains and the greatest risk of flooding will be limited to the southwest peninsula. Further, the storm will not stall just to the north of Hispaniola as previously feared. Rainful amounts of 10-20 cm are expected over the southwest peninsula, but much less, 2.5-10 cm will fall over the earthquake zone, enough to cause serious but not catastrophic flooding.

HaitiLibre reported more violence at the border with Dominican Republic, caused by the closing of the transnational markets during the epidemic.

PAHO has created a useful interactive map to track the outbreak.

An article on the politics of finding the source of the epidemic: ”‘The idea that we’d never know [the source] is not very likely. There’s got to be a way to know the truth without pointing fingers.’”

More resources:

Haiti: Operational Biosurveillance (Twitter)

H5N1

HaitiLibre (English) (français) (Twitter — English and French)

Mediahacker: Independent multimedia reporting from Haiti (Twitter)

PAHO’s Haiti Cholera page. (PAHO Situation Reports and other documentation.) (Blog.)

On the ground, good sources of information and of course needing donations:

Partners in Health (Twitter).

Médecins sans frontières