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Tackling cholera in Haiti, a year after the outbreak

by Anna MacSwan/Merlin | Merlin - UK
Friday, 25 November 2011 12:53 GMT

* Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In Haiti, just over a year after the first cholera cases were confirmed in October 2010, the epidemic remains far from over.

Although Merlin has provided care to over 15,000 patients to date, the arrival of the rainy season has caused the number of cases to increase again, making our work to prevent and treat cholera as important as ever.

Crucially, the destruction of water and sanitation services as a result of the January 2010 earthquake means that resources for stopping the disease from spreading are very poor.

Because cholera was unknown in Haiti before the outbreak, in addition to setting up treatment centres and rehydration points in Port-au-Prince, Petit Goave and the Nord Est, Merlin has also been educating communities with key health messages about prevention and treatment.

Merlin’s anti-cholera brigade

Vital to this work has been Merlin’s team of cholera “Brigadiers.” The Brigadiers hold lessons in large groups and home visits, where they distribute water purification tablets, rehydration salts, buckets for washing hands and leaflets illustrating cholera symptoms and good hygiene.

A visit to Merlin’s clinic in Forte Liberte shows the benefits of this approach. For example, Francois Oludsom, 11, was brought here after falling ill in the middle of the night. His mother Charlimaine suspects that he caught cholera after bathing in a pool of stagnant water created from two days of heavy rain.

Luckily, because of Merlin’s Brigadiers, Charlimaine knew how to recognise the symptoms and brought Francois to our clinic for treatment straight away.

Our health workers are also enthusiastic about community education. Luxon Eloi, 35, works for Merlin as the supervisor of a team of 25 cholera brigadiers.

Sometimes he educates the community in large groups, and other times he does individual home visits. He enjoys the close contact that his job gives him with the community.

One of the benefits of home visits is being able to see the conditions in which people live – if they have access to a latrine and where they get their water from. This gives Merlin intimate knowledge of the health problems faced by people and how to tackle them.

Luxon says there are many challenges facing Haiti, but a lack of access to safe water is the most urgent.

Your support is vital to containing the spread of cholera and helping to rebuild Haiti’s health system in the aftermath of the 2010 quake, so do please continue to support Merlin's life-saving work.

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