# 5128
The CDC’s MMWR (Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report) at irregular intervals offers dispatches – usually reports from the field – regarding ongoing infectious disease outbreaks around the globe.
The last MMWR update on the cholera epidemic in Haiti came on October 29th (see MMWR Dispatch: Cholera Outbreak In Haiti).
Today’s (December 8th) update is reported by the Ministry of Public Health and Population, Haiti. Pan American Health Organization. CDC
Since this is a lengthy dispatch, I’ve only reproduced the opening couple of paragraphs.
Follow the link to read the entire dispatch, and the editorial comments that follow.
Update: Outbreak of Cholera --- Haiti, 2010
Dispatch
December 8, 2010 / 59(Dispatch);1-5The first cholera outbreak in Haiti in at least a century was confirmed by the Haitian National Public Health Laboratory on October 21, 2010 (1). Surveillance data through December 3, provided by the Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP), indicated that the outbreak had spread nationwide and that cases of cholera and cholera-associated hospitalizations and deaths had climbed rapidly in November. As of December 3, MSPP reported 91,770 cases of cholera from all 10 departments and the capital city of Port-au-Prince; 43,243 (47.1%) patients had been hospitalized, and 2,071 (2.3%) had died. A rapid mortality assessment in Artibonite Department found that deaths occurred as rapidly as 2 hours after symptom onset and identified important gaps in access to life-saving treatments, including oral rehydration solution (ORS). Urgent activities are under way, and additional efforts are imperative to reduce cholera mortality by expanding access to cholera treatment and to reduce cholera transmission by improving access to safe water and adequate sanitation.
A nationwide cholera surveillance system has been established in Haiti. Hospitals and clinics send daily case counts to local MSPP officials; aggregate data are sent on to department-level officials and then to central government officials. A case of cholera is defined as profuse, acute, watery diarrhea in a resident of a department in which at least one case of cholera has been laboratory-confirmed by isolation of Vibrio cholerae from culture of a stool specimen. A hospitalized case occurs in a patient admitted to a health facility (i.e., a hospital or cholera treatment site) for at least one night. A cholera death is the death of a person with illness that meets the case definition for cholera. Any cholera death that occurs in a health facility, regardless of whether the decedent was admitted overnight, is considered a cholera hospital death. MSPP posts daily and cumulative tallies of cholera reports on a public website; tallies are stratified by department and age group (aged <5 years and all ages).* Since November 16, nonhospitalized cases have been posted in addition to hospitalized cases.
