Cholera Kills More Than 2,000 in Haiti
Haitian officials say more than 2,000 people have died of cholera since late October.
According to the official count, more than 91,700 people have been sickened by the disease.
Cholera had never been seen before in Haiti before the outbreak began along the rural Artibonite River. Due to dire sanitation and systemic health care shortages, it has spread to every region of the country.
Aid workers have tried to bring the epidemic under control but it continues to rage, especially in rural areas.
The United Nations said last week that the death and infection tolls could be twice as high as officially reported.
Haiti is also recovering from a devastating earthquake on Jan. 12 that killed as many as 300,000 people.
In March, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said cholera was "extremely unlikely to occur" in Haiti. There were no cholera bacteria there. Most foreigners were relief workers with good sanitation who come from countries where cholera is not an issue.
Then it did happen. Even more surprisingly, it did not first appear in a major port, an earthquake tent camp or an area where foreigners are concentrated, but instead along the rural Artibonite River.
People living nearby have long complained about the stink in the back of the base and sewage in the river. Before the outbreak began they had stopped drinking from that section of the river, depending instead on a source farther up the mountain.
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