Cholera could kill 10,000 in Haiti in the next year

Terra Daily via AFP: The cholera epidemic in Haiti could kill 10,000 people and cause 200,000 infections in the coming year, a doctor with the Pan-American Health Organization said on Wednesday. "Our projections show that we could have around 200,000 cases of infection in Haiti over the next six to twelve months," PAHO regional advisor Ciro Ugarte told AFP.

"If the fatality rate (of four to five percent) is maintained... we may have 10.000 dead," said Ugarte, describing this as "the worst case scenario." "The cholera epidemic cannot be stopped, especially in places where there is a lack of safe water supply, basic sanitation," he said. "The cholera could spread beyond Haiti, in the Dominican Republic and beyond."

More than 1,100 Haitians have died since cholera was first detected in the nation in mid-October. The number of people treated in hospitals and clinics has soared to 18,382. The PAHO, a regional office of the UN's World Health Organization, has warned that cholera has taken hold and the troubled Caribbean nation should now expect hundreds of thousands of case over the next few years….

Solid waste has been bought by the inhabitants of Petite Anse (Cap-Haitien, Haiti) to create a road and "soil", after it has decomposed. Shot by Rémi Kaupp, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license