Cholera overwhelms Haiti as cases, deaths spike amid crisis
- At least 40 deaths and 1,700 suspected cases have been reported, but numbers could be much higher, especially in crowded and unsanitary slums and government shelters
- Patients are dying as they are unable to reach a hospital in time, health officials say, with crisis exacerbated by rise in gang violence, lack of fuel and water
The sun shone down on Stanley Joliva as medical staff at an open-air clinic hovered around him, pumping air into his lungs and giving him chest compressions until he died.
Nearby, his mother watched.
“Only God knows my pain,” Viliene Enfant said.
Less than an hour later, the body of her 22-year-old son lay on the floor wrapped in a white plastic bag with the date of his death scrawled on top. He joined dozens of other Haitians who have died from cholera during a rapidly spreading outbreak that is straining the resources of non-profit and local hospitals in a country where fuel, water and other basic supplies are growing scarcer by the day.
Sweat gathered on the foreheads of staff at a Medecins Sans Frontieres treatment centre in the capital of Port-au-Prince where some 100 patients arrive every day and at least 20 have died. Families kept rushing in this week with loved ones, sometimes dragging their limp bodies into the crowded outdoors clinic where the smell of waste filled the air.
Dozens of patients sat on white buckets or lay on stretchers as IV lines ran up to bags of rehydrating fluids that gleamed in the sun. So far this month, Medecins Sans Frontieres has treated some 1,800 patients at its four centres in Port-au-Prince.