Life
Haiti launches new anti-cholera vaccination campaign
The government of Haiti along with international partners launched a vaccination campaign against cholera on Saturday targeting 100,000 people in vulnerable areas of the country.
The program was launched in the area of Cite de Dieu, in the Haitian capital, where health practitioners are going door-to-door to deliver doses to pre-registered recipients.
More than 7,000 Haitians have died of cholera since an epidemic broke out in 2010.
According to the Director-General of the Health department, Gabriel Thimote, the 100,000 beneficiaries in 2 regions in the west and northern Artibonite region will receive 2 doses of the vaccine, called Shanchol, that will protect them for 2 to 3 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 reporters.
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 NGO, Partners In Health, has been designated to carry out the vaccination program in Bokozel, near the northern town of St-Marc.
The country’s 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.
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 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).
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.
Source: Reuters