Haiti Cholera Treatment and Prevention Program

July saw the largest increase in cholera patients at our cholera treatment centre, with 152 patients seen on just one day.  It’s not been an easy task helping to oversee the largest treatment centre in the North, serving Haiti’s second largest city, but our team on the ground have been doing a great job.  July in Haiti was filled with many meetings with Konbit Sante, UNICEF and others, about the on-going needs of cholera and how best we can support the increase.  The final long-term emergency concrete foundation was completed at the centre, and within a few days was having a 150 bed capacity tent built upon it.  We’d hoped we wouldn’t see these tents again, as they had originally been used in the first peak, but in the last few months had become a distant memory.  The frustration for HHA is that the July peak, the highest in almost 5 months, was in part down to the closure of our oral rehydration posts with Konbit Sante.  Due to our funding finishing we had to close these posts at the end of May, and within weeks we started seeing the result.

Cholera is a disease that Haiti as a nation will have to contend with for many years since it was introduced to the country in October 2010. Our original response was effective, yet as happened in July, there will be an upsurge in cases at times, a spike – which we need to be able to respond to immediately.  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 keep supporting this project to help us save lives and prevent the spread increasing.

Links:

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