Life
Haiti: Cholera vaccination commences
After myriad delays and setback, health workers in Haiti are beginning to vaccinate against cholera.
Today, 50,000 people living in the slums of Port-au-Prince will start to get immunized against the disease. This weekend, another 50,000 villagers in the low rice-growing areas of the Artibonite River valley will get their first doses of an oral cholera vaccine.
It’s a pilot project that will involve only 1 percent of Haiti’s population. The aim is to show that it’s possible to give the required two doses over a two-week period to desperately poor and hard-to-reach people.
If it works, the plan is to convince the Haitian government, deep-pocketed donors and international health agencies to support a much bigger campaign to vaccinate millions of Haitians at highest risk of cholera.
The Indian producer of Shanchol, the vaccine being used in Haiti, makes it only when agencies put in orders. So the pilot project in Haiti, which is using 200,000 doses at a cost of around US$400,000, is using up almost all the current world supply of the cholera vaccine.
The health minister, Dr. Florence Duperval Guillaume, approved the project last December. The previous Haitian government opposed cholera vaccination. Insiders say that’s largely because influential agencies such as the Pan American Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signaled their opposition.