Haiti cholera epidemic will affect hundreds of thousands, says UN official

Outbreak is spreading faster than predicted and could last a year in the earthquake-hit country

The cholera epidemic in Haiti is spreading faster than predicted and is likely to affect hundreds of thousands of people, according to a senior United Nations official.

Since it broke out in mid-October, the waterborne disease has killed at least 1,344 people as it spread through crowded housing and the camps and makeshift shelters in which almost a million people are still living after the earthquake in January.

Nigel Fisher, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Haiti, said the epidemic had now spread to all 10 of the country's provinces and could last up to a year. He said the real death toll could be closer to 2,000, because there was little reliable data from remote areas.

"It's going to spread," he said. "The medical specialists all say that this cholera epidemic will continue through months and maybe a year at least, that we will see literally hundreds of thousands of cases."

He also believes that the true current number of cases is up to 70,000, rather than the official estimate of 50,000, Reuters reported.

He told a UN news conference by video link that the World Health Organisation's experts were now revising their estimates upwards. They had predicted 200,000 cases within six months but now believed that figure could be reached in half the time.

Aid workers needed to "significantly ratchet up" their response, he said, including going through faith groups to distribute water purifying tablets, and increasing the number of treatment centres.

But he admitted that the challenge of opening new centres was complicated by local fears that it was the UN itself that brought the infection to the island.

At least two people were killed and dozens injured in clashes last week between UN troops and protesters, who claimed that the source of the outbreak was contaminated water near the base of UN peacekeepers from Nepal.

Edmond Mulet, the head of the UN peacekeeping mission, said all tests had proved negative, and there was no scientific evidence the Nepalese were implicated.

The earthquake hit on 12 January, centred 16 miles west of the capital at Port-au-Prince, and affected an estimated three million people. The true casualty figures may never be known, but the Haitian government estimates that 230,000 were killed, 300,000 injured, and at least a million left homeless after 250,000 homes and 30,000 commercial buildings collapsed or suffered major damage.

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk