Weather conditions — not UN soldiers — may have triggered Haiti's cholera epidemic, which has killed more than 1,000 people in less than a month, three leading researchers have told SciDev.Net. A coincidence of several catastrophic events — from climatic changes caused by the ocean-atmosphere phenomenon La Niña, to the plunge in water and sanitation quality following Haiti's disastrous January earthquake — provide the most likely explanation for the outbreak, which has hospitalised 17,000 people. The outbreak suddenly appeared in small communities along the Artibonite River, 60 miles north of the capital Port-au-Prince, on 21 October.
Weather conditions — not UN soldiers — may have triggered Haiti's cholera epidemic, which has killed more than 1,000 people in less than a month, three leading researchers have told SciDev.Net.
A coincidence of several catastrophic events — from climatic changes caused by the ocean-atmosphere phenomenon La Niña, to the plunge in water and sanitation quality following Haiti's disastrous January earthquake — provide the most likely explanation for the outbreak, which has hospitalised 17,000 people.
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The outbreak suddenly appeared in small communities along the Artibonite River, 60 miles north of the capital Port-au-Prince, on 21 October.
Its origin has not been determined with certainty but the popular belief is that the disease arrived with infected UN soldiers from Nepal. They were stationed in a rural base near the river where the outbreak first started.
Cholera is endemic in Nepal whereas Haiti has not had a recorded cholera case in the last 50 years.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a press release earlier this month (1 November) that genetic analysis of the cholera strain that hit Haiti reveals that it most closely matches South Asian strains, which further fuelled the suspicion.
But scientists SciDev.Net talked to all and rejected the idea that cholera was imported from Nepal.
Photo credit: HealthRelatedInfos.com
Article continues: http://www.scidev.net/en/news/haiti-s-cholera-epidemic-caused-by-weather-say-scientists.html
