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So in areas where
cases are being seen
it's important to basically have facilities that are able to receive the patients.
It’s important to have the appropriate personnel and supplies so that you can provide care to cholera
patients in order to keep the death rates low.
In fact, in the event that cholera continues to spread in other areas of Haiti,
some of these projects are already being put in place where cholera treatment centers are
being stood up, beds are available, supplies and personnel are also available
to see patients if and when they do
arise in any particular areas.
So today we went into Gonaïves
specifically to research
and to investigate exactly
if they were seeing an increased number of cholera cases today.
The first objective was to
visit the health facilities that in fact were seeing and treating the cholera patients
to confirm whether this indeed was true.
The second part of the evaluation really has to do with understanding the capacity of
both the personnel the numbers supplies that are at each of these facilities
to get an understanding of whether it was going to be adequate to
treat
appropriately the increased number of cases that were being seen.
We were actually very impressed. Without any significant help from the international
community,
the local staff at both facilities actually were able
to treat the cholera
patients appropriately
to keep the
death rates down
at appropriate levels.
Fortunately what we're seeing is that the international agencies are scaling up very aggressively
and both sides in Gonaïves and they're basically
within the next few days going to be able to double or triple the capacity that is there.
So there are
definitely an increased number of cases that were seen
last week.
Fortunately the staff that were there have been able to keep the death rates low.
So the situation is serious
but it's certainly not dire,
and we look forward to
these international health agencies being able to double or triple the capacity that is already in place.