Cholera A Real Threat In Haiti

Oct. 29, 2010 - PRLog -- Five cases of cholera were reported in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, though it is believed the disease was picked up in the rural areas.

Health employees rushed to keep the outbreak from becoming an epidemic among the 1.3 million earthquake survivors, who are forced to still live in squalid make-do tent slums around the capital. The provincial outbreak left over 3,000 ill and 250 people dead.

Hopes are high that the disease has been contained in Port-au-Prince. Members of one grassroots Haitian organization toured around Port-au-Prince's camps booming warnings about cholera from speakers on the back of a pickup truck.

Cholera creates an infection of the small intestine from the bacterium Vibrio cholera.

Contaminated drinking water or food is the source of transmission. The severity of the diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain can lead to dehydration and electrolyte imbalance.

The first stage of defense against the disease is to supervise intravenous dehydration solutions. Some antibiotics can then prove to be useful in combating the disease.

Roughly 1 million V. cholera bacteria must be ingested to start off cholera in healthy adults. Cholera is rarely passed from person to person. The source of contamination is typically from other cholera patients when their untreated diarrhea discharge is allowed to get into groundwater, waterways, or drinking water supplies.

The last major outbreak in the America occurred in 1910-11. Effective sanitation practices are usually enough to halt the disease.

Africa accounted for 87 percent of the 140,000 cased formally recorded in 2000.

More than 2,000 people were admitted to hospitals in 2007 when an outbreak occurred in Orissa, India. A lack of clean drinking water in Iraq produced an outbreak of cholera in the same year.

There was an outbreak in 20 provinces in Vietnam in 2008 and in a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Over 4,000 deaths were reported in 2008-09 in the Zimbabwean cholera epidemic with an estimated 98,592 people infected. Although the officials stated the outbreak was over, the underlying problems still remain.

The health ministry said the outbreak was blamed on heavy seasonal rain and poor sanitation. With outbreaks in 12 of its 36 states Nigeria saw near epidemic proportions of cholera in August 2010.

For more information about "Cholera A Real Threat In Haiti", visit website http://www.tropicpost.com/fear-of-cholera-epidemic/

Dr Wendy Stenberg-Tendys and her husband are CEO's and founders of YouMe Support Foundation, providing high school education grants for children who are without hope. You can help in this really great project by taking a few minutes to check out the Sponsor a Student program at (http://youmesupport.org).It will change the life of some really needy kids in the South Pacific.
Feel free to contact Wendy on admin@youmesupport.org

# # #

YouMe Support Foundation is a non-profit charity, raising funds for non-repayable higher-education grants for geographically and financially disadvantaged children.