MOSCOW, October 9 (RIA Novosti) – In Haiti, a cholera outbreak is still posing a serious threat to the country and the weakening response to the disease could have disastrous consequences for Haiti population, reports AFP Washington.
"That's still an emergency situation," the UN coordinator Pedro Medrano told AFP. "I fear that the enormous progress we have made leads people to believe that the problem has been resolved. It is not resolved," he added, stressing that the international community should continue its efforts in eradicating the epidemic.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the continuing Haiti cholera outbreak is the most severe in contemporary history. It began following the disastrous earthquake of 2010 and was supposedly brought in by the UN peacekeepers from Nepal, deployed to the country after the natural catastrophe, as reported by Daily Mail.
A series of reports states, the contamination has resulted from shortcomings in a UN base’s sanitation system as sewage spilled into the Haiti’s Artibonite River, used for household purposes and bathing. However, the UN has rebuffed the accusations, claiming it is impossible to discover the source of the infection, media reported.
In the first half of 2014, only 8,600 infection cases were registered in comparison to the 200,000 documented in 2013, Medrano said. However, he added that slippage in the response "is not only an error but could have tragic consequences."
Since the 2010 cholera outbreak, about 700 000 people have been infected and over 8500 more have died from the disease.
