Friday, March 18, 2011
Cholera victims in Haiti (AP Photo: Ramon Espinosa)
Haiti could be facing nearly twice as many cases of cholera this year than what the United Nations has predicted, say researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Francisco.
A new study warns that nearly 780,000 cholera cases could develop in 2011, with the disease killing about 11,000. The UN had estimated 400,000 cases of the diarrheal disease for Haiti.
So far, 231,070 cholera cases and 4,549 deaths have been reported by the Haitian government. Prior to the earthquake last year that destroyed much of the island’s infrastructure and produced unsanitary conditions, Haiti had not experienced a single cholera case in more than 100 years.
UCSF medical resident Sanjay Basu, MD, has warned that the “epidemic is not likely to be short-term.”
“It is going to be larger than predicted in terms of sheer numbers and will last far longer than the initial projections,” Basu added.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
UCSF Study Predicts Cholera Epidemic in Haiti will Far Exceed U.S. Projections (University of California, San Francisco)
Haiti's Cholera Outbreak Worse than Expected, New Report Finds (By Julia Edwards and Althea Fung, National Journal)
Deporting to the Land of Cholera (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
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