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Disease, hunger dog Haiti flood victims
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-15 09:49 Doctors are fighting to
prevent multiple epidemics among survivors from the drowned Haitian town of
Mapou, one of the worst-hit areas in floods that killed about 2,600 people three
weeks ago.
A small team of doctors from Cuba and from the Paris-based Doctors Without
Borders are fighting outbreaks of mosquito-borne fevers like malaria and dengue
in Mapou, which is still under water following the May 24 floods.
"Now the situation is under control. We are trying to prevent an epidemic.
But it can explode any time," Cuban physician Miuber Castillo told reporters on
Sunday.
The floods, triggered by days of torrential rains, swamped entire villages in
the Dominican Republic and Haiti, which share the Caribbean island of
Hispaniola.
More than 1,000 flood survivors have visited an improvised health clinic set
up in Mapou, a valley village about 25 miles southeast of Port-au-Prince.
Apart from malaria and dengue, doctors reported a high incidence of diarrhea,
respiratory failure and scabies.
Castillo and a Cuban colleague walked for more than six hours over mountains,
across rivers and through bush and mud to reach Mapou, isolated when its only
access road was washed away.
One of the lives they saved was that of Elda Lundi, 25, who gave birth to a
baby at her home without assistance.
"When she was transported here to the clinic she appeared to be in a stable
situation," said Castillo. "But suddenly her situation deteriorated seriously."
A physician with Doctors Without Borders donated blood for a transfusion to
save the woman before she was evacuated by helicopter to Port-au-Prince, where
she and the baby were reported to be doing well, Castillo said.
Doctors said they saw about 100 patients a day in their makeshift clinic but
many others with serious conditions have no transport to get there.
"So we organized mobile clinics to bring medical assistance to those people
in their communities," said Dr. Alexander Perez, one of more than 500 doctors
and health specialists deployed in Haiti by Cuba since the late 1990s.
A helicopter on Sunday transported nearly eight tonnes of rice, vegetable oil
and biscuits to the region, along with generators, plastic sheets for shelter,
water buckets, tents and mattresses donated by Japan. Some 200 hungry children
lined up for biscuits in Mapou on Sunday.
The International Red Cross was helping to move people from low-lying towns
to villages built on nearby hillsides to minimize the risk of further flood
disasters.
The six-month Caribbean hurricane season began on June 1, adding to fears of
more heavy rains and mudslides. Haiti is particularly vulnerable to flash floods
because its citizens have virtually stripped the land of trees to make charcoal,
the primary cooking fuel.
Enough supplies to provide temporary shelter to some 360 families had arrived
in the region but shelters for only 50 had been built, a Red Cross official
said.
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