Haiti’s Department of Epidemiology, Laboratories, and Research (DELR) reported over 2,400 confirmed cases and over 29,700 hospitalized cases on Feb. 28. The DELR has shared that 594 people have died from Cholera in Haiti and that it has spread to Dominican Republic where there are now 88 confirmed cases.

Nearly 20% of the confirmed cases are children aged one to four and 16% of cases are children aged five to nine. Some physicians suspect the newest spread of the disease is due to a lack of immunity among young children and increased risk to bacteria from unsafe living conditions due to ongoing social and political strife. Haiti health experts have reported a lack of access to affected areas and limited fuel distribution that has inhibited basic water and sanitation services. There is also a growing global cholera crisis that has increased demand for supplies like the oral vaccine.

Cholera is a bacterial disease typically spread through contaminated water or food. Symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting, dehydration, and sometimes fever. The disease was first introduced to the country in 2010 by U.N Peacekeepers responding to the catastrophic earthquake. The Center for Disease Control reported over 820,000 cases and nearly 10,000 deaths at the time.

The earlier outbreak put a heavy toll on the Haitian people, given how the disease was brought to them and how quickly thousands died from the disease. Dr. Wilfrid Cadet, Chief Medical Advisor at Health Equity International, said the messaging around the importance of hand washing, water treatments and general sanitation has been more well-received in 2023.

“As a society, we have remembered what happened,” Cadet said. “During the first outbreak, there was denial and rejection…we haven’t seen that in the new outbreak. Instead, there is more social mobilization and solidarity.”

Cadet said that cases peaked in November of 2022 and have steadily declined, although thousands are still presumed to have been affected already. The medical advisor said that the current social and economic strain on the country exacerbates unsanitary and unsustainable living conditions. In November, Health Equity International reported that the price of food in Haiti had increased to 63% due to inflation, putting almost half the country’s inhabitants at “acute food insecurity.”

Potable water and medical supplies, like oral treatments, are also needed to stop the spread, as well as more health professionals in areas where there is limited access to care.

Dr. Marie Deschamps, Deputy Director of Groupe Haitien d’Etude du Sarcome de Kaposi et des Infections Opportunistes (GHESKIO), said that patients with confirmed cases of cholera in 2022 knew their water wasn’t potable but drank it anyway because “they had no choice.”

“It is unbelievable that in 2023 so many people do not have access to clean water,” she said. “This is unacceptable; this is something that they need to consider where someone can at least have access to clean water and not have to drink contaminated water.”

Deschamps, who works in Haiti, said health officials are working to decrease the stigma around the disease. The physician told Direct Relief that residents are more informed now than they were in 2011, so they try to seek treatment when they see potential signs of cholera.

The disease causes dehydration, which can be fatal if not properly treated. Fluids and nutrients are needed to overcome cholera, usually through oral or intravenous methods.

But medical professionals say treating the new wave of cholera has proven difficult. Transportation barriers across major roadways have been blocked, forcing healthcare institutions to deliver medical supplies by helicopter. Conor Shapiro, President and CEO of Health Equity International, says the helicopter deliveries have limited the number of supplies transported each day.

“Given the security challenges out of Port-au-Prince, we’ve been (transporting) medical supplies by helicopter with the UN to people in the south,” he said. “So over 2 million people in the south of Haiti are cut off completely from Port au Prince by road because of the security situation.”

In December, the State Department put Haiti under travel advisory “Level Four: Do Not Travel.” The U.S. Embassy released a statement on Feb. 5 that the travel restrictions are still in effect due to kidnapping, crime and civil unrest, citing that armed robbery, carjackings and violent crime were common. Fewer nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations are active in the country since 2011, and Haiti’s government does not have the resources or support to fight the humanitarian crisis on its own.

Shapiro said Health Equity International prioritized prevention and treatment methods during Haiti’s “horrific” cholera outbreak in 2010. The nonprofit has increased access to potable water, supported treatment centers and supplies at hospitals, and used community health workers to teach preventative methods.

“We’re in unprecedented times in terms of security in Haiti,” Shapiro said.  

Since Oct. 2022, Direct Relief has shipped more than 61 tons of medical aid to Haiti, including cholera treatment kits, to health organizations working in the country.

The post Children Affected Most During Haiti’s Recent Cholera Outbreak appeared first on Direct Relief.

“It’s really hard to say what is the state of Covid-19 in Haiti right now. Many people don’t believe in the pandemic in Haiti. People are staying home and self-treating. They’re not going to the hospital,” said Margarett Lubin, country director of Haiti for CORE, a nonprofit started by Sean Penn after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. She, and colleague Dr. Floris Nesi, added that a lack of testing has also contributed to the opaque situation.

Commingled with these issues is widespread mistrust amongst the population towards the government and public health authorities, who often must battle misinformation, which can further stigmatize patients seeking care.

Despite ongoing outreach campaigns to counter these conspiracy theories with scientifically-supported public health policies, progress has been meager, according to Nesi.

“For the most part people are not listening,” he said, which Lubin said is also reflected in the crowded Port-Au-Prince streets as well as the open markets, offices, including government offices, and international airport. Nesi said many Haitians “Don’t believe in the care they provide in hospital,” and that they prefer to treat themselves using traditional medicines, including teas made from armoise (mugwort) and other local plants. He said that people have tended to only visit hospitals only in the late stages of the disease when positive outcomes are far less likely. Lubin said that for many, staying at home or adhering to public health recommendations is difficult due to their need to continuing earning income.

But even if people change their perspectives, and seek care in hospitals and clinics, it is unlikely that the nation has the capacity to treat them, Nesi said.

“The big challenge is the health system is not ready for this virus. We have only 1,120 hospital beds,” Nesi said. A 2019 report in PLoS ONE found that the country only has 124 ICU beds.

Lubin also pointed out that a Covid-19 response also has to be integrated into a healthcare system that must continue to treat those with malnourishment, diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic conditions. Nesi said that many people are forced to travel far distances in order to access care, leading him to believe that a proper solution must be a joint program with several ministries, including those responsible for transportation, education, health, agriculture, and food.

Despite the many unknowns, Lubin and Nesi feel comfortable declaring that there is currently no surge in Haiti, even as testing rates remain relatively low, thanks to more traditional modes of communication.

“News travels so fast here, in cholera you knew exactly what was happening, also from the media, and because people were dropping dead. We’re not seeing any of that and we haven’t heard that either,” Lubin said. “There is no way the government would be able to hide a real outbreak,” she said, though cautioned that one could very well be impending, given the pervasive lack of adherence to social distancing and other public health directives.

Learning From Cholera

CORE and other NGOs have been relying on lessons from their response to cholera and the 2010 earthquake in order to inform their operations and communication strategies for this current outbreak. The Covid-19 pandemic in Haiti, the second-most populous country in the Caribbean with about 11 million people, comes after a cholera epidemic that killed at least 9,200 Haitians and infected at least 820,000 people, according to the Pan-American Health Organization.

Starting in 2010, the last case was identified in January 2019. Beyond the sheer scale of destruction, that experience also had a lasting impact among the population. Despite substantial evidence to the contrary from as early as 2011, the UN officially denied responsibility for years, before finally admitting their role in 2016, as the outbreak was shown to have originated from UN peacekeepers from Nepal.

“The people telling them to wash their hands were infecting them,” said Mark Schuller, an anthropology professor at the Northern Illinois University and president of the Haitian Studies Association. “It struck as hypocritical and infantilizing,” he said, noting that the years of denials “cost the UN any kind of legitimacy amongst most professionals in Haiti.”

That legacy is something CORE is having to deal with now. The NGO has sought to do so, in part, by finding the most influential members of a given area. “When you go into a community and you try to collaborate and engage with leaders to participate, don’t just look for local officials, but really look into those people that the community looks to up and listens to and try to integrate them into the program,” Lubin said.

When she and her team first started their outreach programs, Lubin said there was widespread resistance to establishing Covid-19 clinics in some communities due to unfounded fears that such clinics would help spread the disease. It was only after CORE mobilized local volunteers to engage locals and explain the situation that leaders changed their minds.

Other, more subtle strategies emerged only after trial and error during this pandemic. When CORE members visited the most vulnerable neighborhoods in Port-Au-Prince and more remote areas in the western part of the county to hand out masks, many did not want to accept them, since the masks being handed out were different than the masks CORE staffers and volunteers were wearing.

A Legacy of Mistrust

Schuller said that the origin of mistrust in Haitian society towards their government, the UN, the U.S., Europe, and other actors is deep-seated and based on centuries of adverse, and even punitive, policies.

“Haiti has been subjugated because of its role as a foil to slavery. It’s unbroken. Haiti was invaded 26 times,” he said. Since the U.S. left in 1934, policies set in Washington and Brussels have also propped up unpopular Haitian regimes, which Schuller said has created “two layers of distrust for specific foreign injustices.” Prior to the Covid-19 conspiracy theories, this mistrust was also exemplified by widespread protests last summer and fall as well as earlier this year over, inter alia, $2 billion in missing public funds for large scale infrastructure projects, government spending decisions, and working conditions for police.

“People are very suspicious of the government and you have to collaborate with the government to do this work, so people see you as choosing sides. We received masks from the Ministry of Health and people recognized masks as being from the government and thought they were contaminated,” Lubin said. To allay such fears, she mandated that CORE personnel would wear the government-provided masks during distribution, in order to help build trust.

Public health challenges in Haiti have been more fundamental. As late as June, in some western parts of Haiti, people had not heard of Covid-19, Lubin said.

Underlying issues of poverty on the island are also impairing the ability of healthcare workers to respond in this pandemic and to chronic health issues in general. As is often the case at community health centers in the U.S., Nesi gave the example of instances when he prescribes patients medicines that have to be taken with food, and patients have responded that they are food insecure, before asking if he could prescribe another drug that does not require food.

Even as these issues persist, there are some bright spots.

“They say it’s a disease from foreign people who are trying to kill them, or they say don’t believe in it, but many do something underground, like with cholera. They start washing their hands more,” Lubin said. “But it was only when they saw people die in the streets during the cholera outbreak that they really started to follow recommendations.”

Since the nature of Covid-19 is different, such visual clues might indicate a situation that is already out of hand.

“We are very scared about the situation in 2 to 3 months. We don’t have collective immunity… It might come, I hope it doesn’t,” Nesi said.

Since 2010, Direct Relief has delivered $348 million in medicines and medical supplies to Haiti in support of 224 healthcare centers. Support has been built around several disasters including the 2010 earthquake, cholera outbreak, Hurricane Matthew, and ongoing public health initiatives.  Direct Relief’s year-to-date support to Haitian healthcare centers is valued at $20.8 million and has supported 23 health centers. Direct Relief’s Covid-19 response in Haiti has included the delivery of oxygen concentrators, Emergency Medical Packs, Covid-19 ICU kits, as well as financial support to groups providing medical care in the country.

The post Haitian Medical Providers Remain Wary with Covid-19 Case Counts Unclear appeared first on Direct Relief.

When a storm hits, all eyes are on its destructive path. Homes are torn apart, whole communities are displaced, and worst of all, the death toll rises. In the hours and days that follow, attention turns to the search for survivors and the treatment of deadly injuries. And then the world’s eyes turn elsewhere again.

But disasters can cause threats to public health that turn into their own calamities – and continue for months or even years after the storm has passed. Robert Kim-Farley is a professor of Epidemiology and Community Health Services at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. He explained that conditions in the wake of a flooding disaster, when sanitation is compromised, displaced people are crowded together, and there’s an abundance of standing water, allow disease to flourish.

Fighting a disease outbreak is especially challenging when resources are stretched to the breaking point and access to even basic care is interrupted for months on end.

These issues are especially problematic in regions where basic infrastructure isn’t strong and serious illnesses are already endemic. But according to Nathaniel Hupert, a professor of Healthcare Policy and Research at Weill Cornell Medical College and co-director of the Cornell Institute for Disease and Disaster Preparedness, some post-disaster health problems – infectious or not – can show up pretty much anywhere.

Hupert said that, in the wake of a disaster, infectious diseases crop up in one of two ways: either they’re already present in a community, or they’re opportunistic infections that respond particularly well to disaster conditions.

And where other health problems are concerned, whether behavioral health or disrupted treatments for existing conditions, everyone is at risk.

Endemic diseases

“Complex disasters exacerbate existing endemic and also emerging diseases because they typically interfere with response activities that have been implemented to defend the public’s health,” Hupert said. In other words, if it’s already present in a community, it’s more likely to blossom in disaster conditions.

Disasters impart a one-two punch that’s especially dangerous for the spread of disease: They crowd people closely together in shelters or camps, and they interrupt the continuum of care that’s needed to keep illness at bay. That means that tuberculosis, meningitis, even measles – and other diseases that may require isolation, medications, and vaccinations – are more likely to gain a foothold in communities that are already vulnerable.

That’s especially true in the developing world, Kim-Farley said: “People already are nutritionally compromised, they have weaker immune systems, and you have a ripe situation for a measles outbreak” when vaccination rates are already low.

Crowded conditions and a lack of medical care also allow respiratory illnesses to spread like wildfire. That may not sound so terrible – after all, we’re talking about the common cold and its ilk. But acute respiratory infections, especially among people who are already lacking nutritious food or clean water, can be a major cause of death in displaced populations. That’s especially true for children under five.

Predatory infections

In the second category, Hupert said, are “predatory infectious diseases that pop up exactly where you don’t want them to. Once they gain entree into a precarious situation, they have an opportunity to flourish.”

Cholera is probably the best-known example, made possible by poor sanitation – in particular, when a source of drinking water is contaminated by disease-harboring human waste. Regions without as much existing infrastructure are particularly at risk, but hurricane conditions – when flooding forces people to walk in water contaminated with sewage – increase the risk for everyone.

Basically, any disease that can be transmitted through contaminated water – a list that includes typhoid, hepatitis A and E, and even plain old E. coli – has the potential to thrive in hurricane conditions.

So do mosquito-borne viruses. Flooding inevitably means a lot of standing, unsanitary water – the perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Malaria outbreaks in particular have repeatedly occurred after floods.

Hupert stressed that even opportunistic infections have to spring from a nearby source. A region that’s successfully eradicated cholera is unlikely to see it just because a disaster strikes – although there are deadly exceptions.

Famously, in 2010, a cholera epidemic broke out in Haiti in the wake of a major earthquake. The outbreak shocked the health community: Cholera had been eradicated from Haiti decades earlier. The new source? United Nations peacekeepers, who’d been dispatched from Nepal to aid in the earthquake response – bringing with them a strain of cholera to which Haitians had no immunity. The country has struggled with the disease ever since.

But where mosquito-borne illness is concerned, both Hupert and Kim-Farley cautioned that the definition of “nearby” is beginning to change. Previously, diseases like dengue fever were concentrated within a narrow range of latitudes close to the equator, where it was warm enough for them to thrive year-round. Now, disease-carrying mosquitoes occupy a range that’s increasingly spreading into the southern United States, already prone to hurricanes and flooding.

Non-communicable diseases

Less studied – but increasingly important as non-communicable diseases become more common – is the role that natural disasters play in exacerbating existing conditions. Vital medicines are frequently damaged or left behind during a natural disaster, and replacements sometimes can’t be obtained. Even primary-care services are disrupted or unavailable. “If [people] don’t have access to those medicines, that could be life-threatening,” Kim-Farley said.

There’s some good news: According to Hupert, the picture is changing. As extreme weather events become more common, health systems are becoming more aware of who’s vulnerable – and what can be done to protect them.

Behavioral health

Better understood is the close relationship between natural disasters and behavioral health concerns, which can be caused or exacerbated by extreme conditions. People dealing with the immediate aftermath of a disaster deal with extraordinary stress that can give way to longer-term conditions, including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

And they deal with long-term stressors that continue long after the initial danger of the storm has passed. Researchers have found that not having a source of income or access to insurance in the wake of a disaster can contribute to existing behavioral health concerns.

Plans in place

These are complex issues. But there are some concrete solutions. According to Hupert, one of the most important factors in preventing post-disaster diseases is “nothing exotic, just basic primary care.”

A well-equipped primary care provider, Hupert explained, can make a huge difference for a vulnerable population. That person can “do simple things like making sure that kids aren’t losing too much fluid from diarrhea, making sure that lungs sound clear, and being able to respond with fairly simple interventions, like electrolytes and antibiotics.”

If the provider is appropriately trained, they can even manage pre-existing conditions and screen people for behavioral health issues. It’s not a cure-all, but it’s an invaluable first line of defense.

In addition, Kim-Farley said there’s simply no substitute for good planning. Those essential supplies – including rehydration salts, antibiotics, and medicines for non-communicable diseases – “need to be pre-positioned so that there will be access for people in a disaster situation.”

The good news? There’s more and more awareness around the issue. “Public health officials are running scared all the time about disaster-prone areas,” Kim-Farley said.

Experts agree that as the climate crisis grows worse, extreme weather will become more common. “We’re living in a world in which these things are not as rare as they may have been,” Hupert said. Increasingly, health systems, governments, and aid groups will need to focus on providing continuous care and reliable access to medications – long before a disaster actually hits.

The post How Hurricanes Cause Disease Outbreaks appeared first on Direct Relief.

Cholera is a highly-contagious waterborne disease that can kill a person within hours if not properly treated. However, with swift medical care and the right supplies, 80 percent of cases can be successfully cured.

Because the bacteria has a short incubation period, cholera often has an explosive pattern of outbreaks, especially during the rainy season, which lasts from May through October. Using bleach helps neutralize fresh pulses of active bacteria that may be brought to new areas.

When HAS Haiti first noticed the outbreak in late July at their clinic in Bastien (a rural mountain community), they kept their remote clinics closest to the outbreak open around the clock.

Their staff told Direct Relief they were worried they did not have enough bleach to disinfect homes and treat water sources that flow to the lower Artibonite Valley of Haiti where 345,000 people live.

Direct Relief was able to respond to the request within 24 hours because of its stock of supplies housed in its Haiti warehouse and fast response for donations from its corporate supporter, The Clorox Company. This allowed HAS Haiti to maintain adequate stock and provide continuous care in an urgent situation.

HAS Haiti reports they are getting about 10-15 new cases each day, which is still manageable, however, the rates are not slowing down as the outbreak continues to evolve.

They are working to stabilize active cases and prevent new ones through community hygiene education, water treatment, and disinfection of homes. Management Sciences for Health is also helping distribute the supplies.

Direct Relief’s team continues to monitor the situation and is prepared to ship additional products and medicines.

The ongoing cholera epidemic in Haiti has killed more than 8,000 people and affected 600,000 since it was reintroduced in the country in October 2010.

Direct Relief has worked with HAS Haiti since the 2010 Haiti earthquake and subsequent cholera outbreak. It has steadily supplied the hospital and it’s satellite clinics with multiple large shipments of medicines and supplies each year to help HAS Haiti treat people in need.

The post Responding to the Latest Cholera Outbreak in Haiti appeared first on Direct Relief.

The organization was founded in 1999 by family practice physician, Tracee Laing following her first medical mission to Haiti. During Dr. Tracee’s first trip to Haiti in 1997, she was touched not only by the tremendous medical needs of the people, but also by the beautiful art the Haitians created.

Realizing the suitcases she and her teams used to transport the medications needed for their medical missions would be empty at the end of the trip, she decided to purchase art from the local Haitian artists to bring back to the U.S. and then organized a silent auction of the art in which she raised enough money to fund subsequent medical trips to Haiti and create Healing Art Missions.

After the earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, Healing Art Missions realized they needed to open a full-time medical clinic to replace the community health center they opened in Dumay in 2000. They built a new primary health care clinic, Centre de Santé, which serves a population of 20,000 in Dumay, a rural subsistence farming community northeast of capital, Port-au-Prince.

Centre de Santé provides five-day-a-week access to doctors, laboratory testing, and a pharmacy. Additionally, they offer the Noel Dusan Eye Clinic, vaccine clinics, family planning, prenatal and infant wellness programs, a nutrition program, and clean water programs.  Many programs are free to the community. The cost to see a physician and necessary prescriptions is equivalent to about 60 cents U.S., though no one is turned away if they do not have money.

The clinics are staffed entirely by Haitians. Dr. Jean Fritz Jacques – one of only 100 general surgeons currently working in Haiti – serves as the medical director. In total, 13 full-time medical staff and 11 support staff work at the clinic.

Direct Relief has been supporting Healing Art Missions since December 2010 and to date has provided the organization seven shipments of medicines and supplies totaling more than $372,000. With the support, the nonprofit was able to provide a wide array of medical and health services on an annual cash budget of just under $200,000.

“Without the substantial material support of Direct Relief, our abilities and impact in providing the quality of care we have achieved would be significantly diminished,” said a representative from Healing Art Missions.

Additionally, in 2012 with the help of Direct Relief they:

• performed 224 minor procedures
• gave 2925 vaccinations
• performed 3643 laboratory tests
• enrolled 100 participants per month in the family planning program
• performed 261 eye exams at the Noel Dusan Eye Clinic

Direct Relief is happy to support the work of organizations like Healing Art Missions who are helping thousands of Haitians in need access quality, affordable medical care.

The post Partner Spotlight: Healing Art Missions appeared first on Direct Relief.

Backed by the massive generosity of private and corporate supporters, Direct Relief put together its most comprehensive humanitarian response in its 65-year history and has transformed its immediate disaster response into a commitment to making quality health care viable for the long term in Haiti – a country where Direct Relief has worked for almost 50 years.

The long road to building back better has been filled with lots of bumps. Less than a year after the earthquake, the first ever cholera outbreak in Haiti was recorded and quickly became epidemic. This fall, Hurricane Sandy devastated the island nation, causing severe flooding and damage and further exacerbating the number of cholera cases. Additionally, the World Health Organization reports that 80 percent of the drugs on Haiti’s essential medications list are not available to the population.

These are hard things to fix and improvements are slow, but there is progress.

More and better health services are available now to the people in Haiti than before the earthquake. Better emergency preparedness planning is in place. Permanent, high-quality medical solutions have been built for people in Haiti who can’t afford health care.

Recovery from the earthquake simply isn’t enough, which is why Direct Relief sustains the commitment to continue to work for as long as it takes to bring down the cost of delivering health services so more people in Haiti can receive the care they need to live happier, healthier lives.

Through strong partnerships with the Haitian Ministry of Health and more than 100 generous corporate donors, Direct Relief has provided $90 million worth of essential medical supplies to 115 Haitian hospitals treating four million patients across the country, most of whom cannot afford or acquire the medications they need. However, the true importance of these medications is not reflected in the overall value of donations, but in the thousands of lives that have been improved, and saved, as a result of them.

• The $700,000 grant committed to Healing Hands for Haiti enabled them to fit more than 1,000 patients who suffered severe injuries from the earthquake with prosthesis and provide them with long-term rehabilitation care in a newly-built, state-of-the-art rehabilitation hospital. They are now training more Haitians to become rehabilitation nurses and prosthetists so the future generations of persons with disabilities can be properly cared for.
• More than 500 people with cataracts have the ability to see again, enabling them to work and care for their families as a result of the $5 million worth of state of the art eye equipment and medications donated by Alcon Labs.
• The IV fluids, oral rehydration therapy, and IV tubing donated by Baxter, Hospira, Abbott, and BD have treated more than 150,000 people, or about one-fifth of the population affected by cholera. These items have been stored in Direct Relief’s in-country depot and are rapidly deployed within hours of a cholera outbreak and have served patients in every section of the country.
• The provision of new equipment and supplies donated to six maternity hospitals around the country have allowed for more than 500 cesarean sections and more than 2,000 safe deliveries since the program began in August. Over the course of the next three years, more than 15,000 women will feel safe giving birth where Direct Relief has provided these upgrades.
• The eight hurricane modules that were pre-positioned throughout the country in preparation for hurricane season were each deployed and utilized in the aftermath of cholera outbreaks and Hurricane Sandy which devastated Haiti in October. These modules had enough supplies and medications to treat over 40,000 people.

Over the course of the next week, continue to follow the blog for updates on specific programs and partners in Haiti as well as information about plans for 2013 and beyond.

The post Beyond Recovery: Delivering Care Three Years After the Haiti Earthquake appeared first on Direct Relief.

Because the rains and mudslides destroyed roads and bridges, many people have been cut off from accessing any medical services or clean water sources. The lack of access to health care treatment combined with floodwaters could cause a spike in cholera cases and deaths.

The recent tropical storm conditions have likely spread Vibrio cholera, the bacterium that causes cholera, into many water sources, causing poor sanitary conditions. Since Haiti has few functional sanitation systems that can contain and safely process fecal material, the spread of human feces throughout watersheds make further outbreaks highly likely. Cholera can be easily treated with intravenous (IV)  therapy and antibiotics, but requires immediate medical attention and can kill within days if not treated.

Direct Relief is among the largest providers of medical aid to Haiti since the January 2010 earthquake—1,000 tons, $82 million in medicines and supplies to 115 Haitian healthcare facilities serving four million patients. And Direct Relief is experienced with fighting cholera in Haiti. During the cholera outbreak a year after the earthquake, Direct Relief provided enough medical supplies and equipment to treat 100,000 people and prevent further loss of life.

In any major disaster, information is hard to access because electricity, telephone, and radio communications are cut off. This is exacerbated in Haiti where the infrastructure is already poor. While there have been many rumors of increased cholera cases, it is hard to confirm those numbers. We are doing everything possible to get supplies to our partners, specifically in the southeast of Haiti, where they were hardest hit.

We have contacted partners in this area and offered one of our remaining Direct Relief hurricane modules to Visitation Hospital in Petite Riviere de Nippes. The international modules contain enough medicines and supplies to treat 5,000 people for one month. Fifteen modules were pre-positioned in seven at-risk countries, including Haiti, at the beginning of hurricane season. Visitation Hospital responded:

“Thanks for thinking of us. As of noon  Monday we have not received any cholera patients, but we have gotten a report that there is a an major outbreak in Anse-a-Veau  (about 10 miles west of us). Right now we are trying to confirm this. I really appreciate you sent me a list of the hurricane module contents, and I can see quickly that it contains some interesting medicines and lab or medical supplies that we can you use in aftermath of Sandy, as there’s an increase on the number of patients seen and the number of diagnoses also per patient.”

The Director of Maison de Naissance, a birthing center in Torbeck, southern Haiti also responded to our offer of assistance:

“Thank you for checking in. Maison de Naissance’s biggest challenge right now is electricity as our generator is having serious issues. Although our doors remained open throughout the entire storm (and women did indeed brave the elements to come and deliver their babies!), the staff worked without power. During the day now we are again powered by our solar panels, but because of our broken generator, electricity is not available overnight. As of yet, we have not heard of cholera cases in our immediate zone of service. The radio is reporting many cases near Maniche (South Department).”  

The emergency response team will continue to reach out to partners in Haiti and work to expand health care access throughout the country.

To support Direct Relief’s emergency relief and recovery efforts, donate here.

The post Hurricane Sandy: Fighting the Spread of Cholera in Haiti appeared first on Direct Relief.

Tonight from 7 to 9 p.m., Direct Relief and the UC Haiti Initiative will host “Haiti Today,” a free, public event at UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall. The program includes a panel discussion about health in post-earthquake Haiti and a screening of the 29-minute Tribeca Film Festival “Best Short Documentary” special jury mention winner, “Baseball in the Time of Cholera.”

Panelists will reflect on the two year anniversary of the cholera epidemic in Haiti as well as its effects on the 2010 Haiti earthquake recovery efforts. They will analyze Haiti’s current and future health and development. At the end of the discussion, audience members will be able to ask questions of the panel. Following the film screening, the filmmakers will provide a short commentary on the background of the film, how it was made and what has happened since.

The panel will be moderated by Trevor Neilson, president of Global Philanthropy Group, who has advised Bill Gates, President Bill Clinton, Bono, Sir Richard Branson, and Howard Buffett.  Direct Relief President and CEO, Thomas Tighe, will be the master of ceremonies.

Panelists

• Bryn Mooser – Award-winning filmmaker and director of “Baseball in the Time of Cholera,” he serves as Haiti country director of Artists for Peace and Justice. Mooser lives in Haiti and spends part of his time in country building schools and cholera centers. He recently helped build APJ’s secondary school in Port au Prince—the only free secondary school serving the poorest areas. Before working in Haiti, Mooser served in the Peace Corps in West Africa for three years.

• Brett Williams –  Direct Relief’s Director of International Programs and Emergency Preparedness and Response. Over the past six years, Mr. Williams has led emergency response efforts in some of the largest natural disasters in the world, including the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, and the Haiti earthquake in 2010.  He sits on the Business Utilities Operations Center for the California Emergency Management Agency, tasked with coordinating all medical donations for the State of California during a major emergency.

• Andrew MacCalla – Emergency Response Manager at Direct Relief, MacCalla has been the primary coordinator of Direct Relief’s Haiti response, managing on the ground efforts and collaborating with more than 100 Haitian health facilities, as well as the Haitian Ministry of Health. He holds a Master’s in Public Policy and Management from the University of Melbourne.

• David Darg – Filmmaker and Vice President of Operation Blessing International, Darg has spent the last 10 years responding to some of the world’s biggest disasters and wars, serving as a first responder and frontline photographer/writer for Reuters, the BBC, and CNN. His work has taken him to 30 different countries from Sudan to China, and he is currently based in Haiti. As a filmmaker, David has won numerous awards including a prestigious special jury mention at the 2012 Tribeca film festival as co-director of “Baseball in the Time of Cholera.”

• Mario Joseph – Human rights lawyer and co-director of Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, Joseph has practiced human rights and criminal law in Haiti since 1993. He has represented dozens of jailed political prisoners and has testified as  n expert on Haitian criminal procedure before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and in U.S. courts, and served on the Haitian government’s Law Reform Commission. He spearheaded the prosecution of the Raboteau Massacre trial in 2000, one of the most significant human rights cases anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. The New York Times has called him Haiti’s most respected human rights lawyer.

The post Haiti Today: Healthcare Progress and Challenges appeared first on Direct Relief.

The campaign’s success comes as the country looks back on the introduction of cholera two Octobers ago, which quickly grew to an epidemic. The rapid, tragic spread of cholera in Haiti is a sharp reminder of the importance of immunizations against communicable diseases, particularly for children who are often most vulnerable.

Direct Relief played a pivotal role in assisting Haiti’s Ministry of Health in their monumental campaign— which began in April as a certification effort— to vaccinate 2.5 million children against measles, rubella, and polio.

Launched under the theme, “Protect our world, get vaccinated,” the campaign sought to vaccinate all children under age 10 against measles, rubella, and polio—free-of-charge. Additionally, vitamin A was provided at not cost to children and pregnant women to combat malnutrition as well as albendozale to protect against parasites.

Working with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the medical device company Beckton-Dickinson (BD), a long-time Direct Relief donor, Direct Relief was able to obtain and distribute over 700,000 needles and syringes to be used in the campaign.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services thanked Direct Relief  and BD for outstanding participation in the immunization campaign and the impact it will have on the region.

“Your assistance not only benefits Haiti’s national immunization program but also the region of the Americas in its effort to protect the achievement of its elimination of the measles and rubella to date. The success of Haiti’s upcoming rounds of immunization in increasing vaccination coverage rates will play an important role in Haiti’s documentation of the elimination of measles, rubella, and Congenital Rubella Syndrome necessary for regional verification,” wrote Dr. Kevin DeCock, the Director of the Center for Global Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Anne Schuchat, U.S. Public Health Service Assistant Surgeon General.

Direct Relief supports more than 115 health facilities in Haiti and has been providing essential medicines and supplies to hospitals in the country since 1964. Over the last 48 years, Direct Relief has worked with local hospitals and clinics, delivering 1,500 tons of  essential medications  and supplies worth $82 million, and is the largest supplier of donated medicines to Haiti since the 2010 earthquake.

The post 3 Million Haitian Children Vaccinated in National Campaign appeared first on Direct Relief.

From the article:

“…cholera has killed more than 7,050 Haitians and sickened more than 531,000, or 5 percent of the population. Lightning fast and virulent, it spread from here through every Haitian state, erupting into the world’s largest cholera epidemic despite a huge international mobilization still dealing with the effects of the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake.”

This week, Direct Relief is giving Praecipio International a $20,000 grant to fund the Haiti Epidemic Advisory System (HEAS)-the world’s first National Weather Service-inspired infectious disease forecasting center. This grant will enable them to reactivate the network starting April 1 now that rainy season has begun in Haiti and early reports are already showing a rise in cases—as noted in the article.

The HEAS serves three basic functions:

1. issuance of forecasts for infectious diseases of medical or public health significance
2. facilitation of the HEAS social network, which produces “live” situational awareness
3. facilitation of “switchboard operation” to rapidly connect warning to emergency response

This will help to provide information to the various health actors around Haiti and lead to more rapid detection and confirmation and then response. It helps us at Direct Relief because we have pre-positioned in Haiti 6 cholera modules and 300,000 sachets of oral rehydration to respond immediately upon confirmation from the HEAS on a cholera spike.

Learn more about our Haiti Relief and Recovery program and see our Cholera Response Flickr Photo set below.

The post Haiti’s Cholera Epidemic Update appeared first on Direct Relief.

While cholera cholera cases have been gradually declining over the past few months, heavy rains in southwest of Haiti over the past weeks have lead to a spike in the number of cholera cases in the region. The Grand’Anse and Sud departments located on the extreme western tip of Haiti have had a large number of patients arriving into health facilities to be treated for cholera over the past week. A 37-bed government-run clinic in Randel has been overburdened by patients and is lacking the medical supplies needed to treat them.

In response to a plea for help from the Haiti epidemic advisory system, a forum of over 850 government officials and international organizations who are collectively tracking and responding to the epidemic, Direct Relief has mobilized its in-country team to pick, pack, and transport the essential medical supplies to the affected areas in order to treat 100 patients. These items will include powdered Drip-Drop oral rehydration solutions, lactated ringers, IV needles and tubing, soap, bleach, and antibiotics.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, since cholera arrived in Haiti one year ago it has sickened over 440,000 people (nearly five percent of the population) and killed more than 6,300 people. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that cholera will continue to spike seasonally during the rainy season especially as 600,000 people still remain in tent camps and only 17 percent of the population has access to a latrine following the January 2010 earthquake.

In the past year, Direct Relief International has provided enough antibiotics, oral rehydration solutions, and IV fluids to treat over 100,000 people for cholera, which equates to over 20 percent of those who have been affected throughout the country.

Additionally, Direct Relief has sent six cholera preparation packs to store in its in-country warehouse that will be dispatched as soon as an outbreak occurs in any part of the country. This will help to curb any future spikes in cholera during upcoming rainy seasons.

The wholesale value of these cholera-specific items totals over $5 million.

The post Direct Relief Responding to a Spike of Cholera Cases in Haiti appeared first on Direct Relief.

• 84,146 liters of IV solutions and the accompanying needles and tubing (enough to treat nearly 17,000 patients with severe cholera)
• 36,000 liters of premixed oral rehydration solution (enough to rehydrate over 8,000 people with severe dehydration)
• 300,000 tablets of doxycycline and erythromycin (antibiotics to help over 60,000 people recover from an extreme case of cholera)
• 25,862 liters of Pedialyte oral rehydration product (enough to treat 5,000 children for severe dehydration)
• 89,412 bars of soap, 8,400 gallons of bleach, and 55,848 bottles of hand sanitizer to  prevent the spread of cholera

Direct Relief is also preparing 6 cholera prep kits containing enough IV fluids, needles, tubing, antibiotics, oral rehydration solution, bleach, gloves, and soap to treat 625 patients per kit–or a total of 3,750 people. Direct Relief is also delivering an additional 375,000 sachets of oral rehydration salts (ORS) that, when mixed with water, will provide a full course of rehydration therapy to an additional 75,000 people.

These cholera preparation modules and the ORS will be stored at Direct Relief’s warehouse in Port-au-Prince and can be dispatched at a moment’s notice to any health facility experiencing a surge in cholera patients. Urgent treatment is critical with cholera, which can turn deadly fast if a patient becomes severely dehydrated.

Hospital Albert Schweitzer, the first hospital to treat cholera patients last October and the largest recipient of cholera-treatment supplies from Direct Relief, reports that it has seen 26,365 patients since last October (roughly 15 percent of the total people hospitalized for cholera in Haiti) and are seeing about 21 cholera patients per day (76 percent of whom stay two or more days in hospital).

As of the end of July, the total number of reported cholera cases on Haiti was 419,511, with more than half of these patients requiring hospitalization. Overall, data from health facilities indicate that 5,968 people have died (about 1.4 percent of all cases). The elderly and children are most vulnerable to the acute diarrheal disease.

According to the World Health Organization, up to 80 percent of cholera cases can be successfully treated with oral rehydration salts, and effective control measures rely on prevention, preparedness, and response.

Direct Relief’s warehouse in Haiti has enabled fast delivery of critically needed supplies to help prevent and treat cholera

The post Aid to Treat 100,000-Plus Cholera Patients Delivered in Haiti appeared first on Direct Relief.

The Haiti Epidemic Advisory System has reported 100 new cases of cholera at the hospital.

Since the rainy season has started, cholera is again gaining a foothold among Haitians living in compromised conditions since the earthquake in January 2010. According to news reports, more than 5,800 people have died from the diarrheal disease since the outbreak began last October, and the number of cases is surging in the north. When a patient becomes severely dehydrated, cholera quickly turns fatal.

Direct Relief has supported the cholera response across Haiti, delivering materials to control the spread of the disease and treat patients since the outbreak first occurred. Its support for earthquake-affected people in Haiti has topped $58 million.

The post Cholera-Fighting Aid Delivered to Hospital in Northern Haiti appeared first on Direct Relief.

This shipment was valued at over $15,000 (wholesale) and contained a variety of products that are invaluable for treating more than 31,000 cholera patients. These products were supplied from Direct Relief’s warehouse in Port-au-Prince and included 3,800 tabs of erythromycin (a broad-spectrum antibiotic), 2,000 liters of Drip-Drop oral rehydration solution, 1,800 bottles of antibacterial liquid hand soap, and 564 liters of lactated Ringer’s solution (an intravenous solution).

According to Paul Hendershot, Director of Logistics for Hospital Albert Schweitzer, the hospital is treating an average of 160 to 180 cholera patients each day and takes in nearly 50 new cholera patients every day. Since June 1, it has admitted 1,141 patients; because the patients are admitted faster than they are discharged, the hospitals’ patient numbers are steadily increasing.

Hospital Albert Schweitzer is one of over 100 medical facilities that Direct Relief supports in Haiti. This facility has received $3.6 million (wholesale) in essential medicines, supplies, and equipment since January 2010. These supplies have been provided from Direct Relief warehouses both in Port au Prince and California and will continue to be supplied as needed.

Additionally, Direct Relief is currently assembling 50 cholera kits that will treat 625 patients each and can be provided to partner medical facilities in all 10 departments of Haiti if there is a cholera outbreak in these regions.

Since January 2010, Direct Relief has provided over $60 million (wholesale) worth of medications and medical supplies and has provided over $1.5 million in cash grants to local organizations in Haiti working toward recovery from the earthquake.

The post Direct Relief Expedites Delivery of Essential Medical Supplies to Treat Cholera in Haiti appeared first on Direct Relief.

This is the first major rainfall of the Atlantic hurricane season and there is concern about the country’s ability to respond as the people of Haiti continue their fight against an eight-month-old cholera outbreak that has taxed an already over burdened healthcare system and taken the lives of 5,400 people. Since 2007, Direct Relief has worked to strengthen Haiti’s major hospital referral centers each hurricane season by providing prepositioned modules of medications and supplies in three strategic locations across the country that can be used to treat 5,000 people for one month. This program gives healthcare providers the ability to immediately respond to people’s medical needs created by storms and flooding by having the right medications and supplies on hand and ready to use, thereby eliminating the lag time associated with transporting aid into the country after a storm has struck.

Since rainy season began in the beginning of May, the numbers of cholera cases in Haiti have been steadily increasing. The number of weekly hospitalizations nationwide has increased from an average of 1,700 to 2,600 people. In Port-au-Prince  alone, there have  been nearly 2,000 cases and 13 deaths reported in the last six weeks. This is in part due to the fact that a large number of the cholera treatment centers that were temporarily set up to treat these patients in isolation shut down earlier this year. However, the centers are now beginning to reopen, and as of June 3 there are a reported 250 treatment centers open throughout the country.

Direct Relief has reached out to healthcare partners in affected areas that may have a potential need for emergency support and has already provided over $250,000 worth of medications, IV fluids, and oral rehydration therapy to partners such as GHESKIO, Partners in Health, and Hospital Albert Schweitzer. Additionally, seven pallets of life-saving IV therapy are currently en route to Haiti, traveling on board the USS Comfort—a Navy vessel carrying emergency medical supplies to Haiti in partnership with Project Handclasp. Additional medicine and supplies in California- and Haiti-based warehouses have been made available and Direct Relief stands ready and able to respond.

Since the earthquake in January 2010, Direct Relief has dispatched over 700 tons in aid consignments to Haiti and $57 million (wholesale) in aid has been sent to care for people affected by the disaster.

The post Direct Relief Reaches Out to Healthcare Partners After Severe Rain Storms Sweep Through Haiti appeared first on Direct Relief.

Since we had just cleared four containers through customs, gotten them to our warehouse, and offered these products out via the online portal (the first time this had been used internationally) to 12 different groups (including CAM), I was able to call our warehouse manager and have him pull the products they ordered. This included about three pallets of IV fluids that were donated by Baxter. See the note below about what this meant to these patients.”

—Andrew MacCalla, Haiti Program Operations Specialist

Dear Direct Relief,

It is with overwhelming gratitude that I write to express my appreciation for the IV fluids (lactated Ringer’s solution, 1000 ml) we received from you this past week.

We are using them exclusively for the treatment of cholera patients at our 22-bed makeshift facility in northwest Haiti. We are the only ones in our rural region providing care for cholera patients.  The nearest hospitals to us are 20-plus miles away, taking 2 ½ hours to reach by vehicle.  We received our first definite cholera patient on October 27 and have been caring for them ever since. So far we’ve had 180 patients hospitalized and over 430 others who have come for milder symptoms of cholera not requiring IV fluids. To this date we haven’t lost any patients.

So far, too, we’ve always had IV fluids with which to treat our patients. There have been many times we’ve almost run out, but in the nick of time have gotten more. Sometimes we’ve been down to our last 3 liters of fluids! This past week Direct Relief saved the day for us. I think we would have run out of fluids on Monday if it wasn’t for the 10 cases of fluid we received from you over the weekend.

Thanks a million!

Bethanie Burkholder, FNP
Christian Aid Ministries
LaSource, Commune de Baie de Henne
Northwest Haiti

The post A Family’s Story appeared first on Direct Relief.

Direct Relief is working in collaboration with Haiti’s national Ministry of Health and its departmental directors, as well as directly with individual health facilities caring for cholera patients throughout the country.

As of yesterday, official reports indicate that 60,240 people have been treated for cholera in medical facilities across Haiti and 1,415 people have died. WHO/PAHO estimate that the cholera outbreak could affect up to 400,000 people.

The sheer physical volume of medical supplies over this six-week period is unprecedented in Direct Relief’s history. The distribution effort is being managed through a Port-au-Prince–based distribution center and Direct Relief’s SAP-based inventory platform that enables online ordering, tracking, and visibility.

Consistent with Direct Relief’s longstanding practice, all medical materials have been requested by end-user health facilities and imported with the approval of the Haitian Ministry of Health, and all are furnished free of charge. Below is a summary of the aid furnished:

• Doxycycline: sufficient quantities to treat 23,500 people with severe cases of cholera.
• I.V. materials: 72,421 1-liter bags of lactated ringers and sodium chloride (estimated by requesting facilities to treat at least 10,000 patients needing intravenous rehydration.) An additional 40,000 I.V. catheters is en route.
• Pedialyte children’s oral rehydration solution: 10,689 1-liter bottles (estimated to treat 2,672 babies with each child receiving four 1-liter bottles).
• Premixed oral rehydration solution: 26,100 1-liter containers (estimated to treat 9,000 patients with moderate or early stages of cholera).
• Disinfectants and Hygiene Supplies: 30,864 bottles of hand sanitizer, 19,200 bars of soap, 4,200 gallons of bleach, and enough PUR water tablets to purify 57,600 gallons of water. These materials have been requested to prevent the spread of cholera, as the most important aspects of prevention are clean water, proper hygiene, and disinfection.

Rapid and extensive support from Direct Relief’s corporate partners to the cholera outbreak has been essential, as the vast majority of medical material noted above has been donated from commercial inventories. Direct Relief has used $200,000 in Haiti-designated cash contributions for transporting, clearing, in-country trucking and delivery of materials in response to the cholera outbreak.

The post Six Weeks Into Outbreak, More Than 157 Tons of Medical Aid Delivered appeared first on Direct Relief.

Here’s a quick update and some insights gleaned from conversations with people directly treating cholera patients. We are coordinating at the highest levels of government and providing needed medicines to Haiti’s health system. Here are a few highlights from the last two days:

Today we had a request from Mrs. Flaurine Joseph, Pharmacy Director for Haiti, to support the Northern Department (which includes Cap-Haitien, the second-largest city in the country and where cholera cases have been reported) with supplies to treat cholera. We told her that an air shipment landed today in Cap-Haitien and is being followed by two ocean containers. This shipment was sent in direct response to a request by the director of the Ministry of Health (MSPP) in the country’s Northern Department, Dr. Jasmin. Mrs. Joseph immediately called Dr. Jasmin to confirm that it had arrived and announced the news at a meeting of ministry officials and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

We met with medical officers who have been directly responding to the cholera outbreak, as well as Mrs. Joseph and Georges Dubuche of Management Sciences for Health. The consensus is that what we’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg. The population is mobile and many people don’t have access to clean drinking water. The 10,000 confirmed cases are in six of Haiti’s ten Departments.

Today we visited Medishare in Port-au-Prince, which now has four patients in a cholera tent in the back of the hospital. They have strict regulations about who can go in and out and the need to bleach your hands and feet upon exiting the tent. Hence the huge need for bleach in country.

There are roughly 20 Cholera Treatment Centers (CTCs) around the country that are being managed by the MSPP and NGOs. These are tents where cholera patients are placed (away from the normal patient population) on cholera beds and receive IV drips. We were told today that a patient can lose up to 15 liters of fluid a day and often require four IV bags at a time to replenish them. But if they are caught and treated early, they can be healthy within hours.

Everyone we’ve spoken to–doctors, nurses, pharmacists, MSPP–has confirmed that the most needed items are lactated ringers, normal saline, IV poles, oral rehydration solution, and bleach. These are the items we’ve been providing.

It seems that groups working on the ground are doing a great job of sharing resources and getting what’s needed where it needs to go.

The post Haiti Cholera Outbreak: Report from the Field appeared first on Direct Relief.

Partners in Health received 16 pallets to serve their patients in Mirebalais (an hour north of Port-au-Prince, where five people have died and 100 more need medical attention) and Saut-d’Eau. Hospital Albert Schweitzer (HAS) has taken four pallets to their hospital in Deschapelles, where they have been seeing 90 patients per day.  HAS was the first hospital in Haiti to see cholera patients during the outbreak. Project Medishare in Port-au-Prince is using seven pallets in the St. Marc area to support its temporary cholera treatment centers.

Andrew MacCalla, Direct Relief’s Haiti operations specialist, has been participating in the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) health cluster meetings to inform our response in collaboration with governmental and nongovernmental agencies. He reports that as of yesterday, Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) has counted 442 deaths and 6,742 hospitalized cases from cholera. He also reported on bad sanitation conditions in many parts of the country, combined with heavy rain (15 inches predicted over the next 48 hours) from Hurricane Tomas and ensuing flooding and displacement of people are expected to accelerate the cholera infection rate. MSPP has requested additional clean water distribution as well as a focus on the Cite Soleil and Cite Eternal communities, which are especially vulnerable to weather-related events; additionally, MSPP is promoting the training of medical staff on management of severe dehydration, focusing on the correct distribution and use of ORS, as well as distribution of soap and water purification tabs.

Direct Relief has supplied 30 tons of ORS to assist in this effort, as well as distributing thousands of hygiene kits for families living in temporary camps in Port-au-Prince, Carrefour, and St. Marc.

The post Direct Relief Equipping Partners Responding to Cholera Outbreak as Hurricane Tomas Looms appeared first on Direct Relief.

Direct Relief is infusing an additional 137 tons of medical essentials by ocean and air transport in response to requests for assistance from 4 Departments in Haiti, including the Artibonite Department in which the outbreak occurred.

In response to a request from Dr. Jasmin, director of Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) in the Northern Department, Direct Relief is providing to the Justinian University Hospital in Cap-Haitien antibiotics to treat 16,000 people andtablets to purify 30,000 gallons of water in the event cholera spreads to the north.

In response to other requests from the MSPP and partner groups providing aid, Direct Relief is providing large volumes of essentials, including:

• 4,200 gallons of bleach, donated by the Clorox Company in the Dominican Republic;
• A 40-foot ocean container of CeraLyte, a premixed oral rehydration solution;
• Four 40-foot containers of IV solution, tubing, and needles donated by Baxter.

Direct Relief has allocated $250,000 to mobilize and transport the large volumes of medical supplies needed to respond aggressively to this public health emergency.

Haiti’s MSPP reported today a total of 4,649 cases of cholera and 305 deaths in four departments since October 20. Cholera, a diarrheal disease, is spread primarily through water contaminated with fecal matter and quickly turns fatal when a patient becomes dehydrated.

News and radio programs are being broadcast in the capital city to inform residents on proper hand-washing techniques and ways to stay hydrated until one can get to the hospital if they suspect they are ill. Officials are working to locate the source of cholera, as it has not been seen in Haiti for over 50 years and reportedly didn’t arise directly as a result of the earthquake.

The post Massive infusion of Aid Delivered to Fight Cholera Outbreak in Haiti appeared first on Direct Relief.

In addition to the 20-ton air shipment supplied to Partners in Health, Hospital Albert Schweitzer, and the Medishare program this week to support their efforts to treat cholera patients, Direct Relief is also supplying Justinian University Hospital, the second-largest public hospital in the country, located in the north of Haiti, with water purification tabs, antibiotics, oral rehydration solutions, and IV fluids should the outbreak extend there.

Direct Relief also received a truckload of 4,200 gallons of bleach from The Clorox Company in the Dominican Republic. This generous donation will deliver to the Artibonite region so the hospitals and clinics can properly clean their facilities and prevent the spread of the infection to other patients.

While the death rates from the cholera outbreak have slowed, public officials still fear that there may be a larger outbreak in Port-au-Prince due to the highly mobile Haitian population. The infection can spread quickly if the proper sanitation is not practiced. Direct Relief will continue to provide needed supplies to the primary points of medical care throughout Haiti throughout this crisis.

The post Direct Relief Providing Needed Medicines and Supplies at Request of Haitian Ministry of Health and Director of Pharmaceutical Services appeared first on Direct Relief.

Direct Relief’s emergency air shipment contains medications and supplies requested by Partners in Health and Hospital Albert Schweitzer, which manage hospitals in the affected areas and have scaled up their efforts to treat cholera patients. Direct Relief also is working with the Haitian Ministry of Health and other public health officials throughout the country to provide supplies needed to treat cholera patients and prevent an expansion of the outbreak beyond the Artibonite.  The Ministry’s Department of Pharmacy made an additional request for assistance today.

Cholera is spread through water and food contaminated by human waste. Efforts to contain the outbreak are centered on providing people with access to clean food and water, education about proper hygiene, oral rehydration, and antibiotics once the infection has progressed to a more severe stage. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warns of the spreading of cholera to slum areas, earthquake recovery camps, and across the border to the Dominican Republic.

Direct Relief also has distributed 2,000 hygiene kits for families who may be susceptible to infection. These kits contain basic products, including soap, shampoo, bleach, detergent, and feminine hygiene supplies, to support a family of five for one month.

Since the January quake, Direct Relief has provided over 450 tons of medical aid worth over $52 million to dozens of medical facilities throughout Haiti. In addition, Direct Relief established a grant program for local Haitian nongovernmental organizations providing essential services. This grant program has thus far furnished over $500,000 in cash grants to 25 locally run Haitian organizations.

The post Haiti: Direct Relief Commits $250,000, Airlifts 20 Tons of Medical Aid for Cholera Outbreak appeared first on Direct Relief.

Facilities in the St. Marc area are overwhelmed with cholera patients; Partners in Health reports that its facility in St. Marc is treating 1,600 people alone. With new cases appearing near Port-au-Prince, prevention is also critical. Direct Relief also dispatched 400 hygiene kits today from our warehouse in Haiti, which are being sent to St. Marc tonight to help improve personal sanitation and prevent the spread of cholera.

Dr. Georges Dubuche, of Management Sciences for Health, described the outbreak as a “terrible situation that threatens the nation.”

Direct Relief is scaling its infusion of emergency medical aid to treat approximately 10,000 people, and is collaborating with governmental and nongovernmental agencies to assist in the response. Haiti’s Director of Pharmacy, Mrs. Flaurine Joseph, has extended a request for Direct Relief’s assistance in responding to the outbreak. Mrs. Joseph visited Direct Relief’s headquarters earlier this year to learn about and observe the tight controls on pharmaceuticals and other medical aid we provide.

The post Direct Relief Emergency Aid Shipment Enroute to Haiti appeared first on Direct Relief.

Hospital Albert Schweitzer and Partners in Health in St. Marc and St. Damien Hospital  in Port-au-Prince have requested materials to treat the diarrheal disease, which can quickly become fatal as a patient becomes dehydrated. The materials include IV sets and solutions, oral rehydration solutions for adults and children, antibiotics, soap, bleach, masks, gloves, and water purification tablets.

With Direct Relief’s relationships and systems put in place in response to the January 2010 earthquake, the organization is ideally positioned to expedite this urgently needed aid. Hurricane modules, which contain such items as oral rehydration solution and other appropriate products, were pre-positioned in June with Partners in Health, St. Damien Children’s Hospital, and Justinian University Hospital in Cap-Haitien (north of the outbreak).

Seven ocean freight containers are in port in Haiti now, with four containing materials that can be used to help cholera patients. Direct Relief is also working to source urgently needed material to air freight to Haiti. The organization is coordinating efforts with the Haitian Ministry of Health and Georges Dubuche of Management Sciences for Health to expedite the response and save lives.

Cholera spreads through compromised water and sanitation systems; it is believed that this outbreak has originated near the Artibonite River. With more than 1,500 cases reported so far, the outbreak could reach tragic proportions if it hits the nearby camps in Port-au-Prince.

The post Direct Relief Delivering Urgently Needed Medical Aid to Fight Cholera Outbreak in Haiti appeared first on Direct Relief.