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The New York Times: “Cuba Takes Lead Role in Haiti’s Cholera Fight”
HAVANA, November 8, 2011.- The New York Times, one of the most important newspapers in the United States, published today in its print edition an article by Randal C. Archibold on the leading role of Cuba in the fight against Cholera in Haiti
Here are excerpts:
The family from a nearby village arrived at the small hospital here vomiting and with uncontrollable diarrhea, at first glance maybe a typical case of consuming bad food or water.
But the fluid loss was tremendous and unstoppable; two of the three brothers were already near death, and within hours the entire family would be dead. Meanwhile, a nightmarish stream of patients filled the small reception room, as doctors and nurses scrambled to rehydrate them.
It was the evening of Oct. 15, 2010. Cholera, the doctors with the Cuban medical mission that treat most of the patients here would soon confirm, had arrived in Haiti.
“We went back to our books to see if this really could be cholera and then reported it right away,” said Dr. Jorge Luis Quiñones, a member of the Cuban medical mission here at the center of the outbreak.
More than a year later, cholera has killed 6,600 people and sickened more than 476,000 — nearly 5 percent of the nation’s 10 million people — in what United Nations officials call the world’s highest rate of cholera. Last month, Partners in Health, a nongovernmental organization, announced it would begin testing a vaccine in January, in conjunction with the Ministry of Health and a Haitian health organization.
As the epidemic continues, the Cuban medical mission that played an important role in detecting it presses on in Haiti, winning accolades from donors and diplomats for staying on the front lines and undertaking a broader effort to remake this country’s shattered health care system.
Paul Farmer, the United Nations deputy special envoy to Haiti and a founder of Partners in Health, which has worked extensively on health care in Haiti, said the Cubans sounded an important early alarm about the outbreak, helping to mobilize health officials and lessen the death toll.
Even more, while the death rate peaked last December (2010) and the world’s attention has largely moved on, “Half of the NGOs (nongovernment organizations) are already gone, and the Cubans are still there,” he said.
Cuban doctors have worked in Haiti since 1998, when 100 arrived after a hurricane as part of Cuba’s five-decade program of establishing international medical missions. Since then, Cuba has worked with Haiti and Venezuela and lately Brazil, Norway and other countries to build and provide staff and equipment for several dozen small community hospitals, clinics and other treatment centers. (…)
There is no doubt that the Cuban mission has been vital here. It was among the largest international aid contingents to respond after the January 2010 earthquake that tumbled Haiti into crisis. And since the cholera outbreak, the mission has treated more than 76,000 cases of the disease, with just 272 fatalities — a much lower ratio, at 0.36 percent, than the average across Haiti as a whole, in which 1.4 percent of cases ended in death, according to the Health Ministry.
“We work a lot on the education of the population,” said Dr. Lorenzo Somarriba, the chief of the Cuban medical mission. “We send people to the homes of the victims and educate them on the disease and provide them with tabs to clean the water. This is absolutely vital.” Such purification tablets have been critical in a country where treated water is rare.
Indeed, here in Mirebalais the team has not seen a fatal cholera case since December (2010), he said.
The Haitians under treatment here, just grateful to have doctors, do not seem to care what nationality the physicians are.
“They provide good service,” said Mercidieu Desire, 33, who was being treated for diarrhea that doctors concluded was not cholera. “I came in, they treated me and I feel better.”(…)
(Cubaminrex)
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