In Haiti, cholera deaths spike
Fuel, water supplies scarce
PORT-AU-PRINCE — The sun shone down on Stanley Joliva as medical staff at an open-air clinic hovered around him, pumping air into his lungs and giving him chest compressions until he died.
Nearby, his mother watched. “Only God knows my pain,” said Viliene Enfant.
Less than an hour later, the body of her 22-year-old son lay on the floor wrapped in a white plastic bag with the date of his death scrawled on top. He joined dozens of other Haitians who have died from cholera during a rapidly spreading outbreak that is straining the resources of nonprofits and local hospitals in a country where fuel, water, and other basic supplies are growing scarcer by the day.
Sweat gathered on the foreheads of staff at a Doctors Without Borders treatment center in the capital of Port-au-Prince, where some 100 patients arrive every day and at least 20 have died. Families kept rushing in this past week with loved ones, sometimes dragging their limp bodies into the crowded outdoors clinic where the smell of waste filled the air.
Dozens of patients sat on white buckets or lay on stretchers as IV lines ran up to bags of rehydrating fluids that gleamed in the sun. So far this month, Doctors Without Borders has treated some 1,800 patients at its four centers in Port-auPrince.
Across Haiti, many patients are dying because say they’re unable to reach a hospital in time, health officials say. A spike in gang violence has made it unsafe for people to leave their communities and a lack of fuel has shut down public transportation, gas stations, and other key businesses including water supply companies.
Enfant sat next to her son’s body as she recalled how Joliva told her he was feeling sick earlier in the week. She had already warned him and her two other sons not to bathe or wash clothes in the sewage-contaminated waters that ran through a nearby ravine in their neighborhood — the only source of water for hundreds of people in that area.
Enfant insisted that her sons buy water to wash clothes and add chlorine if they were going to drink it. As Joliva grew sicker, Enfant tried to care for him on her own.
“I told him, ‘Honey, you need to drink the tea,’” she recalled. “He said again, ‘I feel weak.’ He also said, ‘I am not able to stand up.’”
Cholera is a bacteria that sickens people who swallow contaminated food or water, and it can cause severe vomiting and diarrhea, in some cases leading to death.
Haiti’s first major brush with cholera occurred more than a decade ago when United Nations peacekeepers introduced the bacteria into the country’s biggest river via sewage runoff at their base. Nearly 10,000 people died and thousands of others were sickened.
The cases eventually dwindled to the point where the World Health Organization was expected to declare Haiti cholera-free this year.
But on Oct. 2, Haitian officials announced that cholera had returned.
At least 40 deaths and 1,700 suspected cases have been reported, but officials believe the numbers are much higher, especially in crowded and unsanitary slums and government shelters where thousands of Haitians live.
Worsening the situation is a lack of fuel and water that began to dwindle last month when one of Haiti’s most powerful gangs surrounded a key fuel terminal and demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Gas stations and businesses including water companies have closed, forcing an increasing number of people to rely on untreated water.
Children younger than age 14 make up half of cholera cases in Haiti, according to UNICEF, with officials warning that growing cases of severe malnutrition also make children more vulnerable to illness.
Haiti’s poverty also has worsened the situation.
“When you are unable to get safe drinking water by tap in your own home, when you don’t have soap or water purifying tablets and you have no access to health services, you may not survive cholera or other waterborne diseases,” said Bruno Maes, Haiti’s UNICEF representative.