Outbreak of the Day: Cholera

The rainy season has come to Port-au-Prince, bringing with it a jump in the number of cholera cases. According to the United Nations, health officials are seeing as many as 77 new cases a day since early March.

The city has been battling a rampant cholera epidemic since last year, when as many as 1,000 people a day were infected. Authorities were eventually able to stem the spread of the disease, but worry that this is a new flare-up.

According to the Associated Press:

The disease, now the largest cholera outbreak in the world, has killed more than 7,000 people and sickened another 530,000, health officials say. The disease was likely introduced by a U.N. peacekeeping unit from Nepal, where the disease is endemic, several months after the January 2010 earthquake.

And treatment is hampered by a lack of coordination and "an absence of salaries paid to people working in cholera treatment centers run by Haitian authorities," according to the Associated Press.

Photo credit: Swoan Parker/Reuters