Cayman doctors vigilant for cholera

Cayman’s
medical professionals are on alert for patients showing cholera symptoms after
reports that Haiti’s deadly
cholera epidemic has spread to Florida and the
Dominican Republic.

The
Cayman Islands Health Services Authority medical officer of health Dr. Kiran
Kumar said the authority had notified health practitioners on 1 November to be
on the lookout for any patients returning from Haiti with symptoms of the disease.

“We
sent a notification to all doctors and medical staff that if anybody has
travelled to Haiti
and has diarrhoea or vomiting, which are the usual symptoms of cholera, they
should take stool samples to test if it is cholera,” Dr. Kumar said.

The
Health Services Authority has alerted its staff and also private practitioners
through the Dental and Medical Association and the Health Practice Commission,
Dr. Kumar said.

He
added that health services officials did not expect to see cholera locally.

A Florida woman returning from a visit to her family in
Artibonite Valley of Haiti and a Haitian construction worker who lives in the Dominican Republic, but who recently spent two
weeks in Port-au-Prince, are the first reported
incidents of the disease being imported from Haiti.

The
first cases of the acute intestinal infection in Haiti were reported four weeks ago
and since then 1,110 people have died from the disease and another 18,382 have
been hospitalised.

Cayman
issued a travel advisory in late October warning people of the cholera outbreak
and advising against travelling to Haiti due to the epidemic. A team
of volunteers from Butterfield Bank who last month had been due to take part in
a rebuilding programme for victims of the 12 January earthquake, which killed
an estimated 300,000 and left 1.5 million living in tents and under tarps, cancelled
their trip due to the outbreak.

Dr.
Kumar said that since the travel advisory was issued, no traveller from Cayman
had approached the Public Health Department for advice on visiting Haiti. “However,
of course, people may go there and not notify us, or maybe come to Cayman after
going other places after leaving Haiti,” he said.

According
to the Miami Herald, medical officials in Florida
said the infected woman, who returned from Haiti a week ago, did not have a
job that put her in close contact with the public so the chances of her
spreading the disease were small.

In
the Dominican Republic,
the government has banned Haitian
street vendors in border markets from selling
food, juice and used clothes, and mats soaked in bleach have been placed at
border entry points so feet and car tyres are sanitised upon entry.

According
to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, for cholera to exist,
there must be significant breaches in the water, sanitation, and hygiene
infrastructure used by groups of people, permitting large-scale exposure to
food or water contaminated with Vibrio cholerae organisms; and the disease must
be present in the population. While it is unclear how cholera was introduced to
Haiti,
both of these conditions currently exist there.

Cholera
is an acute, diarrheal illness caused by infection of the intestine with the
bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The infection is often mild or without symptoms, but
sometimes it can be severe and can fatal within hours if left untreated.

Anyone
who has travelled to Haiti
recently and shows symptoms of the disease is advised to consult a doctor
immediately.