Cholera stalks Haiti in wake of hurricane
‘It’s like the end of the world,’ survivor says
RENDEL, HAITI• There is a plague on this town.
Even before the winds and rain toppled nearly everything standing, cholera was here. It came down from the mountains, washing into the lives of the thousands who once lived above the river.
Now the only sign of life is in a makeshift clinic dealing with hundreds of suspected cholera cases, a small concrete building where a few nurses contend with the swarms of patients arriving every hour.
There is only one public official left. The mayor was struck by cholera and left to seek treatment hours away. Others fled to-escape the ruin visited on the town by Hurricane Mat- thew and its aftermath.
“Ninety per cent is gone,” said Eric Valcourt, a priest in the Roman Catholic parish that runs the clinic and a school now sheltering those too sick or poor to leave. “Many left by foot to escape the disease and devastation. The rest died from cholera or the hurricane.”
A week has passed since the hurricane tore through this remote stretch of southern Haiti, leaving an apocalyptic landscape of treeless countryside, destroyed homes and a land robbed of its natural riches.
But for many, the torment has only started. Cholera, the disease at the heart of Haiti’s last disaster, is being spread again by this one.
About 10,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been sickened since cholera first appeared in late 2010. Scientists say it was brought to Haiti by UN peacekeepers stationed at a base that leaked waste into a river.
Now, the disease is stalking the areas gutted by the hurricane, where clean water was already hard to find. Here in Rendel, a gruelling four- hour trek to the nearest paved road, the disease has spread to every crevice of this valley and the hills above.
Rendel and its surroundings, which once sheltered 25,000 people, are the epicentre of a potential disaster. Thousands have fled, carrying all they have left: split bags of clothes and small livestock. They carry disease, too, destined for towns connected to the rest of the country by road.
Those who remain bear witness to the slow release of misery. Heroic nurses care for patients splayed on the floor like rag dolls, some resting atop the improvised stretchers. Patients vomit and defecate on the floor or into small yellow buckets.
The waste is emptied into a hole on the hill just behind the clinic, awaiting the next rainfall to overflow once again. The smell of bile and excrement stings the nostrils.
Many of those infected refuse to come to the clinic at all, fearful of being blamed for the outbreak.
A lowing child is rocked on her mother’s lap as an IV drip pumps fluids into her tiny arm. A young husband feeds his pregnant wife hot porridge, blowing over each spoonful as patients writhe beside and beneath them. A father kisses the ear of his four- year- old son to soften the taste of saline solution.
“I spent the night here with her, but the bed is too small for both of us, so I slept outside and checked on her every hour,” said Jean Romit Cadet, 22, handing the spoon to his wife and urging her to eat. “If I get sick, I get sick. I’m responsible for her.”
In the town, citizens had set up a roadside cleaning station, a simple affair with a tank of chlorinated water that was sprayed onto the shoes and hands of those fleeing.
Rendel itself has been hollowed out. A few concrete homes provide the only reminder of the town that was. Lesser houses have been stacked into piles along with the trees and branches scattered by the storm.
“When you look around you, it’s like the end of the world,” said Joseph Kenso, 33. “Look around you. The disaster speaks for itself.”
One of the only buildings left is the clinic, a twostorey structure that formerly served as a centre for prenatal care. The original cholera care centre was destroyed in the hurricane. It had opened only a week before the storm, to treat people streaming in from the outbreak in the mountains above.
The toll from cholera is unknowable. Most of the dead are buried without any record.
“We don’ t know how many have died in the surrounding community,” said nurse Marie Marguerite Bernadin, 42. “But we know most of the deaths occur outside of here.”