International medical teams are urgently responding to an outbreak of severe diarrhoea in central Haiti that a top government health official said today had killed nearly 50 people in recent days.
Haitian Health Department director general Dr Gabriel Thimote told Reuters that as of late yesterday, 49 people had died and more than 450 were hospitalised in the outbreak.
Patients dehydrated by diarrhoea were overwhelming hospitals in the country's Artibonite and Central Plateau regions, north of the capital Port-au-Prince, he said.
The outbreak appeared to be the most serious health incident to affect the poor Caribbean country since a devastating January 12th earthquake that killed up to 300,000 people and injured many more, mostly in the capital.
Officials from the Pan American Health Organization and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said they were cooperating with Haitian authorities over what they were calling an "outbreak of acute diarrhea".
They said samples from the sick and dead were being analysed in a laboratory to try to determine the precise cause, which was unknown at the moment.
UN office spokesperson Jessica DuPlessis said medical teams from the huge international relief effort that has been helping Haiti since the quake had deployed to the main area of the outbreak, north of Port-au-Prince.
"They want to make sure that it doesn't spread," she told Reuters.
Mr Thimote said many of the 49 victims died in a matter of hours from dehydration as they tried to reach a hospital. The victims were of all ages, but the young and the elderly appeared to be the most affected, he added.
No victims from the diarrhoea outbreak have so far been reported in Port-au-Prince. The worst-affected areas were Douin, Marchand Dessalines and zones around Saint-Marc in the Artibonite region, Mr Thimote said.
The January 12th earthquake left around 1.5 million homeless survivors living in crowded tent and tarpaulin camps in and around Port-au-Prince, but despite initial fears of epidemics, a massive international relief effort has prevented any serious outbreaks of infectious diseases in the wrecked capital.
Reuters