ST. MARC, Haiti — A cholera epidemic was spreading Friday in central Haiti as aid groups rushed doctors and supplies to fight the country’s deadliest health crisis since January’s earthquake. At least 150 people have died, and more than 1,500 others are ill.
The first two cases of the disease outside the rural Artibonite region were confirmed in Arcahaie, a town closer to the quake-devastated capital of Port-au-Prince.
Officials are concerned the outbreak could reach the squalid tarp camps where hundreds of thousands of quake survivors live in the capital.
“It will be very, very dangerous,” said Claude Surena, chief of the Haitian Medical Association.
Scores of patients lay on the floor awaiting treatment at St. Nicholas hospital in St. Marc, 45 miles north of the capital. One of them, Jille Sanatus, 55, had been there since Thursday night, when his son Jordany brought him. A doctor was struggling to stick a needle into his arm.
“He’s completely dehydrated, so it’s difficult. It’s hard to find the vein,” said Dr. Roasana Casimir, who had been working nearly without rest since the outbreak began two days earlier.
Casimir finally penetrated the vein, and fluid from an IV bag began to trickle in, but a half-hour later, the father of 10 was dead.
Sanatus’ son said the family had been drinking water from a river running down from the central plateau region. Health Minister Alex Larsen said Friday that the river tested positive for cholera.
Cholera is a bacterial infection spread through contaminated water. It causes severe diarrhea and vomiting that can lead to dehydration and death within hours.
Imogen Wall, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said sick patients and the contagious remains of the dead have been insufficiently quarantined.
“Part of the problem has been people are moving around a lot, and there hasn’t been proper isolation in place at the clinics,” she said.
The sick come from across the desolate Artibonite Valley, a region that received thousands of refugees after the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed as many as 300,000 people. Cholera was not present in Haiti before the quake, but experts have warned that conditions are ripe for disease to strike in areas with limited access to clean water.
