Cholera Response

July 2011 Update – Cholera spikes

Cholera is a disease that Haiti as a nation will have to contend with for many years since it was reintroduced to the country in November 2010. Our original response was effective but at times there will be an upsurge it cases, a spike – which we need to be able to respond to immediately. Right now the Cholera Treatment Centre that we run with the Haitian Government has again reached full capacity – we believe there is a direct correlation between the increase in cases and the closing down of rally posts in towns and villages in last few weeks as funding ran out. The thing is we know what to do to reduce the impact of the outbreak – we’ve done it once before. What we need is the funding to do it. Please donate today to help us save lives and prevent the spread increasing.

Emergency Response to Deadly Cholera Outbreak

In November 2010 HHA launched an emergency Cholera response, to help tackle the epidemic in the North.

When we launched the response Cap-Haitien was one of the worst hit areas, with a 13% cholera related mortality rate, and a prediction of 1,000 – 1,500 new cases per day.  We quickly partnered with Medicine Sans Frontier and Konbit Sante to help establish Cap-Haitiens second largest cholera treatment centre on our hospital site.  This centre has the capacity to treat between 200-300 patients.  Once this was established and MSF took the lead in managing the site, our attention turned to prevention within the community.

JustGiving Page for Cholera Appeal

Prevention

Through the support of BMS and others we have helped establish a number cholera training conference’s.  Some of the conferences have had over 400 community leaders from varying zones of the Northern department.

We have also helped distribute over 300 water filters, over 5,000 bottles of cholrox, and a million aqua tabs purchased by Konbit Sante.  Much of these supplies supported the work of 55 cholera rally posts we helped support and part fund.

These cholera rally posts were each manned by two cholera community health workers who received training through this programme.  The posts were open between 8am – 4pm, 6 days a week, and provided vital support offering health education, presentations, and distributing soap, disinfectant, and Oral Rehydration Salts.  Well over 5,000 households have been supported through this prevention campaign, which has proved highly successful.  Over 2,000 people were also treated through the cholera treatment centre at our site between the last weeks of November 2010 and January 2011.

Thanks to MSF, and the prevention work carried out by groups like ours, the cholera related mortality rate dropped from 13% to 0.5%.  There has also been a significant increase in cases across the North resulting in many of the treatment centres closing.

The centre on our site is still operational, and likely to become the long term cholera treatment centre.  More to come on that soon.

Below are just a few options to respond, but visit our Get Involved page for more ideas.