Haiti Cholera Cases Expected to Rise

Oct. 22, 2010— -- Hospitals in Haiti are reporting 1,500 cases of cholera, and the Pan-American Health Organization expects the number of cases to rise.

At least 138 people already have died in two days from the cholera epidemic sweeping through the rural regions, Haitian Health Ministry officials reported to the World Health Organization Friday.

The Pan-American Health Organization learned of a surge in diarrheal infections on Sunday, said Dr. Jon K. Andrus, deputy director of the organization, on Friday.

The World Health Organization suggested the outbreak may have originated in rural areas northwest of the quake-stricken region, which could be considered an unlikely center for this type of epidemic because damage mostly was seen in the central part of the country. The news has prompted health officials to think some people became infected by drinking from contaminated river basins.

Meanwhile, hundreds of patients await hospital beds as they are taken to urban areas along the coast of Haiti, the Associated Press reported.

"They are forcing everybody to come up here to St. Nicholas [hospital]," Terry Snow, a protestant missionary in Haiti, told the Associated Press. "I raced this guy up here and he just died now as I came to the gate and they told him no."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed cholera -- a deadly infection caused by unclean food and water -- as the cause of the outbreak in some parts of the country.

"This is an infectious diarrhea and everything that causes diarrhea has one thing in common, and that is an infection that may be caused by water or by food," Miriam Guzman, a Cuban doctor working in Haiti, told the Associated Press.

Haiti is the first country in the Western Hemisphere in nearly two decades to experience a cholera outbreak.

"It's one of the most tragic consequences that could happen," said Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and chairman of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine at The George Washington University. "Having this so close to home is sobering."