Life
Haiti: Anti cholera vaccination campaign launched
(Reuters) – The Haitian government along with international partners including the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a vaccination campaign against cholera on Saturday targeting 100,000 people in vulnerable areas of the 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.
