Jun 19 2012
"Global and local health authorities are not doing enough to fight a cholera outbreak that continues to claim lives in Haiti, Doctors Without Borders said Thursday," Agence France-Presse reports (6/15). Despite a decline in the number of cholera cases in Haiti "as the Caribbean nation leaves the annual rainy season," "the Haitian government and health organizations must continue focusing efforts on stemming the outbreak as the height of the hurricane season nears, said Thierry Goffeau, head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti," the Associated Press/New England Cable News writes (6/15).
"'We are worried about the lack of support from the international community and the lack of action from health authorities in Haiti,' [Goffeau] told AFP," the news service writes. "Since the start of the epidemic in October 2010, 7,500 people have died from the disease that is spread through poor sanitation," AFP notes, adding, "This year alone, it has claimed at least 40 lives in the impoverished Caribbean nation that shares the Hispaniola island with the far wealthier Dominican Republic" (6/15).
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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