Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2010

Mourners carry a coffin containing a relative who died of cholera in Robine, Haiti, Saturday.
Cholera Toll Tops 250 in Haiti
The death toll from a cholera epidemic in Haiti topped 250 Sunday, and a handful of cases in the country’s capital were confirmed, as government officials and aid groups prepared for what they call an inevitable spread of the disease.
Six cases were confirmed in the Port-au-Prince area, said Ariel Henry, chief of staff at the Haitian Ministry of Health. All were travelers from the Artibonite Valley, a rural region north of the capital where the outbreak appears to have originated, so the new cases don’t indicate the disease is spreading to Port-au-Prince.
But Dr. Henry said he expected cholera would begin spreading to the city in the next week. “I have no doubt that it will arrive in Port-au-Prince, because people are moving a lot,” he said Sunday. “It will arrive during the next week probably.”
All told, he said about 253 deaths and 3,115 hospitalized cases were reported in the Artibonite Valley in the first major disease outbreak in the country since the Jan. 12 earthquake. Reports of suspected cases in the Artibonite, Port-au-Prince and elsewhere poured in over the weekend, including 45 ill in Arcahaie, between Port-au-Prince and the northwestern coastal city of St. Marc, where many of the cases have been reported. Continue reading →