Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health has confirmed that cholera has claimed the lives of 461 people since its outbreak three months ago in the Caribbean country; a health crisis that adds to the back of a country in a state of food emergency and ravaged by crime.
According to the latest official balance published late Thursday by Haiti Libre, Haitian health authorities have confirmed a total of 1,576 cases while they are trying to verify another 23,112 probable cases. The number of hospitalized patients with symptoms has risen to 19,186 since the declaration of the first case on October 3, 2021. The average age of those admitted to hospital is 20 years and the incidence is particularly notable among children between 1 and 9 years of age, who account for some 7,700 probable cases.
This health crisis is occurring at a time of extreme insecurity to the point that the Government of Canada has announced the transport of armored vehicles to Haiti to deal with the insecurity crisis facing the Central American country.
The Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, and the Minister of Defense, Anita Anand, have informed that the Executive has thus responded to the requests of the Haitian Government, according to a press release.
To this must be added the hunger crisis. In this sense, the Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, has communicated that in the next few days the country will begin to receive financial support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to respond to the food emergency.
According to what the leader of the Executive has communicated, Haiti is one of the first countries to benefit from this program -called Food Shock Window- and will allow it to implement «a series of social protection actions», he detailed last weekend in a message on Twitter.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
