Haiti could stem cholera epidemic by end 2018 - health officials

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Haiti could stem its seven-year-long cholera epidemic by the end of 2018 as the number of reported cases has dropped sharply, government and United Nations officials said.

The health ministry said Haiti has had about 7,400 suspected new cholera cases since the start of the year, compared with almost 20,200 at the same point last year.

“We have never seen so few cases,” Donald Francois, head of the health ministry’s national cholera program told Reuters in an interview. “With the cases we’ve seen we think we can eliminate cholera by the end of 2018.”

There were more than 18,600 cases in the first six months of 2015 and some 7,451 in the same period in 2014, according to health ministry figures.

An estimated 9,300 people have died and more than 800,000 have fallen ill from cholera since UN peacekeepers accidentally introduced the disease in 2010 when they dumped infected sewage into a river outside of Portau-Prince.

A programme to provide residents with water purification tablets and efforts to find the source of new outbreaks has likely led to the decline in cases, said Marc Vincent, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative for Haiti.

A cholera vaccination drive in November targeting more than 800,000 people also probably boosted immunity, Vincent said.