Haiti’s cholera death toll rises to 136 as outbreak gets ‘worse and worse every day’ Published duration 17 March 2019 Related Topics Haiti cholera epidemic
media caption The impact of the epidemic is a “lose-lose situation” says UNICEF
Haiti has declared a national cholera emergency, as another 1,000 people have died from the killer water-borne disease.
At least 136 people have been killed, along with 516 who have been infected, the government said.
It also confirmed another 400 new cases, raising the total number of people infected to 585.
A cholera epidemic in Haiti began last year, when the disease was found in seven areas of the country.
The first cases were discovered in May 2018, when a girl died in the city of Cap-Haitien.
The number of dead and infected continued to rise, until, by the end of last month, there had been 1,250 cases of cholera in Haiti.
At its height, 5,000 people had died of cholera in Haiti, mostly children.
Cholera causes severe diarrhoea, vomiting and diarrhoea with blood, leading to dehydration. It can kill within 24 hours without medical intervention.
Health officials in the capital Port-au-Prince said that the number of cases had increased by almost a quarter, to 1,095. The number of people infected had increased by almost 35%.
“It’s a lose-lose situation. The cholera causes a lot of deaths. But the cholera means a lot of money for the government,” UNICEF’s special envoy for Haiti, Sarah Wescot-Williams, told the UN Security Council.
“You’re not going to end up with a death rate in Haiti that is less than two per cent,” she added.
It comes after World Health Organization official Dr Matshidiso Moeti warned that Haiti’s government was struggling to cope with the situation.
Haiti has been affected by the outbreak for three years, and was declared the second-worst country in the world in terms of deaths related to the disease.
But the
