* Vaccination campaign to target 100,000 people
* 7,400 deaths from cholera in Haiti, Dominican Republic
* Epidemic said under control as rainy season begins
By Joseph Guyler Delva
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, April 14 (Reuters) – The Haitian
government along with international partners including the World
Health Organization launched a vaccination campaign against
cholera on Saturday targeting 100,000 people in vulnerable areas
of the impoverished Caribbean country.
The program was launched in the slum area of Cite de Dieu,
in the Haitian capital, where health practitioners are going
door-to-door to deliver doses to pre-registered recipients.
“I am very happy that I received the vaccine because now I
will live my life with less anxiety,” Mariane Joseph told
Reuters, after drinking the dose. “I have been waiting for this
vaccine for a long time because we are exposed here to catching
cholera.”
More than 7,000 Haitians have died of cholera since an
epidemic broke out in 2010.
The Director-General of the Health department, Dr. Gabriel
Thimote, said the 100,000 beneficiaries in two regions in the
west and northern Artibonite region will receive two doses of
the vaccine, called Shanchol, that will protect them for two to
three years with an efficiency rate of about 65 percent, health
officials say.
“It is a pilot program that we are launching in two areas in
the country but it will be later extended to the rest of the
population with a priority for areas at risk,” Thimote told
Reuters.
In the capital, the program is being implemented by the
Gheskio Center, a Haitian health NGO that specializes in
fighting the AIDS virus and other infectious diseases, while
another international NGO, Partners In Health, led by the U.N.
deputy special envoy for Haiti, Dr. Paul Farmer, has been
designated to carry out the vaccination program in Bokozel, near
the northern town of St-Marc.
The Haitian health minister, Florence Duperval Guillaume,
rejected allegations that the vaccine is experimental and could
have side effects. The vaccination program was delayed several
weeks after some critics suggested the campaign was a research
project to test new, unapproved drugs.
“This is vaccine that has already been certified by the
World Health Organization, and our campaign has nothing to do
with an experimentation that could have recipients running
risks,” Guillaume said. “People have nothing to fear,” she
added.
Cholera is an infection that causes severe diarrhea that can
lead to dehydration and death. It occurs in places with poor
sanitation and can be treated by drinking clean fluids.
The number of cases has increased slightly in Haiti over the
past few weeks, with frequent torrential rains spreading the
bacteria in several areas where health official had brought the
disease under control.
The Western Hemisphere’s only cholera epidemic has infected
nearly 550,000 and killed 7,400 people in Haiti and the
neighboring Dominican Republic since October 2010 – with nearly
all of the deaths in Haiti, according to the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
Cases of cholera first emerged in central Haiti’s Artibonite
River region, possibly as a result of poor sanitary conditions
at a U.N. base of peacekeepers from Nepal, where cholera is
endemic. Haiti previously had no cases of cholera in recorded
history.
Health workers continue to see 100-200 new cases per day,
but that is far lower than then the 1,000 new cases a day they
were seeing this time a year ago, said Dr. John Vertefeuille,
the CDC country director in Haiti.
Daily numbers can vary according to “seasonal patterns,” he
added, and could rise during the rainy season. “We are still in
the relatively early stages of this epidemic,” he said, noting
that “the goal is to eliminate cholera (in Haiti) over a 10-year
period.”
