Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health has confirmed that cholera has claimed the lives of 490 people since its outbreak in October last year 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 Saturday by Haiti Libre, Haitian health authorities have confirmed a total of 1,742 cases while they are trying to verify another 24,536 probable cases. The number of hospitalized patients with symptoms amounts to 20,505 since the declaration of the first case on October 3, 2022.
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, with a total of 8,200 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, informed a few weeks ago that the Executive has thus responded to the requests of the Haitian Government to reinforce security.
To this must be added the hunger crisis. In this regard, the Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, has announced that the country will begin to receive financial support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to respond to the food emergency.
According to the Executive leader, 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)
