The rainy season brought a surge of cholera to Hôpital Albert Schweitzer Haiti at the end of May, but now we are in the midst of another overwhelming wave. Today, our Cholera Treatment Center has over 300 patients – triple the number we were serving one short week ago. We don’t expect that number will soon decline.
For Haiti, cholera is devastating. Spread through contaminated water, the disease can kill quickly. Patients infected with cholera can become dehydrated within hours of contracting it – often the amount of time that it takes to reach the hospital from some of the more remote locations.
Between October 2010 and June 12, 2011, there have been 344,623 reported cases of cholera, and 5,397 related deaths.
At HAS, our Haitian doctors and nurses are working with volunteers, scrambling to fill the needs of all of the cholera patients. Many of our doctors want to share their experiences and the plight of the Haitians that they are treating.
Dr. John Carroll, a volunteer physician for HAS, has been blogging about his experiences working in the cholera unit over the last few weeks for his local newspaper, the Peoria Journal Star, from Illinois. Dr. Carroll has a history with the hospital: he has volunteered several times before and was even an intern for a few months.
Click here for a recent post from his few weeks in the hospital.
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