Cholera outbreak: 2,000 evacuated from Haiti refugee camp

Geneva, Nov 6 (IANS/EFE) More than 2,000 people were evacuated from a Haitian refugee camp in Corail to a nearby hospital to prevent the further spread of cholera, a humanitarian organisation has said.

“The displaced persons who remain in the camps are being given bottled water to prevent any further expansion of cholera,” the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Friday.

One of the main concerns of international humanitarian organisations is that the disease could invade the refugee camps that now shelter more than 1.3 million people who were forced to leave their homes by an earthquake.

“We still don’t know if there has been any case of the disease in the camps,” IOM spokesperson Jemini Pandya said.

The director of the World Health Organization’s special cholera programme, Claire Chaignat said last week in Geneva that “all the mechanisms are working to halt the worst scenario, which would be the spread of cholera in the refugee camps and in the capital, Port-au-Prince.”

The cholera outbreak in Haiti has already left 442 dead and 6,742 hospitalised, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

–IANS/EFE