Less than a year after the Haitian government declared that cholera had been eradicated in the country, the disease is once again infecting thousands of people.
according to a World Health Organization report As of December 13, the country has reported 13,672 cases and 283 deaths since early October.
Haiti’s last cholera outbreak began in 2010. Now, in a Correspondence of the New England Journal of Medicineexperts say the strain of cholera currently causing another outbreak in Haiti is related to the 2010 strain and is likely a descendant.
The current outbreak was reported first on October 2, according to the WHO, after three years with no reported cholera cases. Between October 2010 and February 2019 the country was reported 820,000 cases and 9,792 deaths from cholera in a massive nationwide outbreak.
In February 2022, the Haitian government declared cholera eradicated eliminated in the country.
Cholera causes severe dehydration and spreads through unclean water
cholera spreads when a person consumes water or food infected with a bacterium called Vibrio cholerae. Symptoms include watery diarrhea and dehydration.
Most cases are not serious, and the WHO said less than 1 percent of those infected die when appropriate treatments are available. However, if left untreated, the disease can kill people very quickly.
Treatment involves rehydrating patients with a solution taken by mouth or pumped through an IV. There are currently three oral vaccines used by the WHO that can prevent cholera.
The WHO keeps a stock of these vaccines, and the organization sent a shipment of about a million doses of one of these vaccines, called Euvichol. to Haiti on December 12th. More cholera vaccines are expected to arrive in Haiti in the coming weeks.
UN troops caused Haiti’s latest cholera epidemic
The massive 2010 eruption began after a deadly earthquake in January of the same year estimated killed more than 300,000 people. United Nations troops from Nepal arrived in Haiti in early October this year.
Before reaching Haiti, a cholera outbreak had occurred in Kathmandu, where troops were training before deployment. On October 12, 2010, the first case of cholera in Haiti was reported in a man who was bathing and drinking in a river two kilometers from where the troops were camped.
In 2011, a UN expert panel definitely that the outbreak had started in a UN camp, and while it did not specifically say that troops from Nepal brought cholera to Haiti, it did say that the Haiti and Nepalese cholera strains were “a perfect match.” Finally, in 2016, the UN authorized that it had played a role in the epidemicalthough she took no legal responsibility.
Scientists do not yet know why this new cholera outbreak is occurring
Scientists are still unsure how cholera resurfaced in Haiti after three years with no reported cases.
In a recent New England Journal of Medicine Correspondence, the authors proposed three hypothetical reasons that cholera might have reappeared.
The first is that cholera cases may have persisted since 2019, but those cases flew under the radar and now cases are rising again due to a lack of clean water and sanitation, along with falling immunity in the population.
The second is that it may have remained present in environmental reservoirs, such as rivers or estuaries, where the organism can survive outside of human hosts for several days at a time.
The third reason is that cholera may have spread to other Latin American countries during the 2010 outbreak, and one of those countries may have reintroduced it to Haiti.
However, the authors say this third option is unlikely, in part because other countries in the region have not reported recent cholera cases.
Regardless of the cause of the new cases, the authors said, “These findings, combined with the resurgence of cholera in several parts of the world despite available tools to control it, suggest that cholera control and prevention efforts need to be redoubled.”
This article was originally published by Business Insider.
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