Thousands of people in Haiti are becoming sick with cholera as medical staff struggle to care for them amid dwindling supplies of fuel, food and water.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is warning of a potential health disaster amidst a quickly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Haiti.
In a country where food and water supplies are becoming scarce, and fuel for transportation is nearly nonexistent, spiking gang violence makes it unsafe for people to leave their homes and communities.
Medical staff at a Doctors Without Borders treatment center in the capital of Port-au-Prince say some 100 patients arrive every day and at least 20 have died in just the past few days, according to ABC News.
So far this month, Doctors Without Borders has treated some 1,800 patients at their four centers in Port-au-Prince. One of the biggest dangers, now that gangs have forced gas stations and businesses including water companies to close is that people are being forced to drink untreated water.
“Without drinkable water, treatment and good waste management, the risk of a spike in the number of cases is very high and this needs to be addressed urgently,” says Mumuza Muhindo, MSF’s head of activities in Haiti.
UNICEF is also involved in Haiti, and a spokesperson for the UN agency says that children younger than age 14 make up half of cholera cases in Haiti, and officials are saying that malnutrition also make children more vulnerable to illness.
“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.
Haiti’s first major brush with cholera occurred more than a decade ago when U.N. 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 October 2, Haitian officials announced that cholera had returned.
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