PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Health workers feared a surge of cholera cases in the shantytowns and muddy tent camps of Haiti’s capital as suspected cases piled up Tuesday and a laboratory confirmed cases originated in the overcrowded, quake-devastated city.
Hundreds of people suffered the cholera symptoms of fever and diarrhea in hospitals and shacks built along the putrid waste canals of slums like Cite Soleil and Martissant.
At least 73 cholera cases had been confirmed among people living in Port-au Prince. Physicians with the aid group Doctors Without Borders reported seeing more than 200 city residents with severe symptoms at their facilities alone over the past three days.
Following Monday’s confirmation that a 3-year-old boy from a tent camp near Cite Soleil had contracted the disease before Oct. 31 without leaving the capital, the Pan-American Health Organization said the epidemic’s spread from river towns in the countryside to the nation’s primary urban center was a dangerous development.
At least two more capital-originated cases were confirmed Tuesday at the same hospital where the boy was treated.
