HTH -- Haiti Earthquake

May 5, 2011. Increase of cholera patients worries Haitian health officials

SOURCE: Altegrity Risk International

An increase in new cholera patients in rural Haiti raises worries that the outbreak may be starting to surge again with the spring rainy season, according to a U.S.-based medical aid group on May 4th. Health experts in Haiti warned in January when the cholera outbreak began to slow that there could be a surge of new cases in the spring as rains helped spread water contaminated with the cholera bacteria. Reports suggest that the number of new cholera patients has tripled in recent weeks in Mirebalais, a central town near where the outbreak was first detected in October.

Since the start of the outbreak, some 5,000 have died and 250,000 been sickened.