Haiti’s cholera death toll rises to 136 as outbreak gets ‘worse and worse every day’
The worst cholera outbreak in the Americas since 2010 has spread to 12 countries, has killed more than 136 people, and is getting “worse and worse every day,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. The deadliest outbreak in the past year has been in India, where more than 650 people from nine states have died and about 20,000 have become sick.
“This is the worst cholera outbreak in the history of our country,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, speaking at a briefing in Washington. “This is the most dangerous and devastating cholera outbreak in our country’s history.”
Most of the affected countries in the region have reported recent outbreaks, which Frieden said has complicated the response.
“What’s happening in Haiti is different from what’s happening in India, but still the lessons for us are pretty much the same,” Frieden said.
The CDC said in a statement that it was “alarmed by the significant rise in the number and severity of cases for which cholera is a primary diagnosis” in Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua, where outbreaks have occurred in the past weeks. In Panama and Peru, outbreaks have reached more than 70 cases.
“It’s alarming,” Frieden said. “And it’s an alert, I think we need to look at this as an outbreak not just the disease.”
The cholera outbreaks in Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua are among the deadliest in the last 25 years since global efforts to contain the disease intensified. According to the World Health Organization, cholera killed more than 8,000 people in Haiti in 2010, at a time when it was the second leading cause of child death and one of the top three causes of death in the Americas. That year, more than 135,000 cases were reported in at least 10 countries across the region, including nearly 15,000 cases in Haiti.
The cholera outbreak in India has been