Jason Erb On The Phone

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Aid workers fight to keep cholera out of Haiti capital

Posted: October 25th, 2010 -- 10:36 AM ET

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CNN Wire Staff


Actor-activist Sean Penn talks about the cholera outbreak and other problems affecting Haiti on CNN's "AC360°" at 10 p.m. ET Monday.

Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- It should be possible to keep an outbreak of cholera out of Haiti's capital, but the potentially deadly disease remains a major risk, an international aid worker told CNN on Monday.

"I think we'll be able to contain it fairly well, but it is a risk, it is a major risk," said Jason Erb, deputy country director for the International Medical Corps.

The fast-moving outbreak has claimed at least 253 lives on the impoverished island nation, which has yet to recover from January's massive earthquake. Another 3,015 cases have been reported, according to Haiti's Health Ministry.

Even if the disease can be kept out of the capital, Port-au-Prince, it remains a serious risk in the tent camps that remain home to tens of thousands of earthquake survivors, Erb warned.

"It's a danger because the camps are so crowded and so unhygienic," he said on CNN's "American Morning."

Aid workers are trying to educate people about the importance of hand-washing and clean water in preventing the spread of cholera, he said.

Blog: Cholera can be deadly within hours

A small number of cases have been reported in Port-au-Prince, but Erb said they seem to be the result of people carrying the disease from the camps -- not from contaminated water in the capital.

And he cautioned against panic.

"You have to have quite a few people to contaminate a body of water," he said. "It's not just going to be one or two cases. That's going to be quite controllable. It's not good ... but it's not going to lead to a massive outbreak."

There is "an awful lot of monitoring" for the disease, he said, and "cases generally don't go unnoticed."

Five patients in Port-au-Prince were infected north of the city in Artibonite, said Imogen Wall, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Haiti.

They traveled to the nation's main city, where health officials discovered them to be infected within the incubation period, she said.

The five have been isolated and are receiving treatment, she said.

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Meanwhile, officials are stepping up sanitation efforts and setting up quarantine areas in Port-au-Prince. Authorities are bracing themselves for a possible larger outbreak nationwide.

"I think the only responsible thing we can do at the moment is prepare and plan for the worst-case scenario," Wall said.

Wall said aid organizations are working on constructing facilities to treat patients and sending more doctors to the affected areas.

"We're all right for supplies ... but we're short on medical personnel," she said.

The cholera outbreak comes after recent heavy rains caused the banks of the Artibonite River to overflow and flood the area.

The river was dammed in 1956 to create Lac de Peligre and is Haiti's dominant drainage system.

On Friday, officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Agency for International Development discussed efforts on a containment strategy for the outbreak.

The CDC will send an 11-member team to Haiti over the next few days to find out which antibiotics will be most effective in treating the outbreak.

USAID will provide supplies needed to set up treatment centers.

The group already has 300,000 oral re-hydration kits in position and is distributing water purification kits in affected areas.

Cholera is caused by a bacterial infection of the intestines and, in severe cases, is characterized by diarrhea, vomiting and leg cramps, according to the CDC. In such cases, rapid loss of body fluids can lead to dehydration and shock.

"Without treatment, death can occur within hours," the agency says.

A person can get cholera by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the bacteria.

During epidemics, the source of the contamination is often the feces of an infected person, and infections can spread rapidly in areas where there is poor sewage treatment and a lack of clean drinking water.

All the reported cases in the Lower Artibonite involve severe diarrhea and vomiting, Wall said.

Ian Rawson, director of Hospital Albert Schweitzer Haiti near Verrettes, said patients began showing choleralike symptoms October 16.

The pace picked up significantly Tuesday and beyond, though he said the situation was under control Friday at his 80-bed facility about 16 miles east of St. Marc.

"So far, we've been able to manage it," Rawson said, noting that new patients were now coming in via pickups about every 10 minutes.

Temperatures in the mid-90s exacerbated the dual concerns about dehydration and people contracting cholera by drinking tainted water.

People with buckets lined roadsides in and around villages, hoping that passers-by might have clean water, said Eric Lotz, Haiti's national director for the nonprofit Operation Blessing.

The U.N. mission in Haiti credited access to clean water and free medical facilities for preventing feared outbreaks of cholera and tuberculosis.

CNN's Paula Newton contributed to this report.