For over a million people still homeless nine months after the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, a brand new nightmare is just beginning.
What many health-care experts and humanitarians have been warning and worrying about since dozens of makeshift tent cities started popping up in and outside of Port-au-Prince is starting to manifest. Haiti is in the midst of an outbreak of a disease that hasn’t been seen on the island in years.
At least 135 people have died in a suspected cholera outbreak, and aid groups are rushing in medicine and other supplies Friday to combat Haiti’s deadliest health problem since its devastating earthquake.
The outbreak in the rural Artibonite region, which hosts thousands of quake refugees, appeared to confirm relief groups’ fears about sanitation for homeless survivors living in tarp cities and other squalid settlements.
“We have been afraid of this since the earthquake,” said Robin Mahfood, president of Food for the Poor, which was preparing to fly in donations of antibiotics, dehydration salts and other supplies.
Many of the sick have converged on St. Nicholas hospital in the seaside city of St. Marc, where hundreds of dehydrated patients lay on blankets in a parking lot with IVs in their arms as they waited for treatment.
Catherine Huck, deputy country director for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the Caribbean nation’s health ministry had recorded 135 deaths and more than 1,000 infected people.
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