By EVENS SANON, Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The sun shone down on Stanley Joliva as medical staff at an open-air clinic hovered around him, pumping air into his lungs and giving him chest compressions until he died.
Nearby, his mother watched.
“Only God knows my pain,” said Viliene Enfant.
Lower than an hour later, the body of her 22-year-old son lay on the ground wrapped in a white plastic bag with the date of his death scrawled on top. He joined dozens of other Haitians who’ve died from cholera during a rapidly spreading outbreak that’s straining the resources of nonprofits and native hospitals in a rustic where fuel, water and other basic supplies are growing scarcer by the day.
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Sweat gathered on the foreheads of staff at a Doctors Without Borders treatment center within the capital of Port-au-Prince where some 100 patients arrive day-after-day and at the very least 20 have died. Families kept rushing on this week with family members, sometimes dragging their limp bodies into the crowded outdoors clinic where the smell of waste filled the air.
Dozens of patients sat on white buckets or lay on stretchers as IV lines ran as much as bags of rehydrating fluids that gleamed within the sun. Up to now this month, Doctors Without Borders has treated some 1,800 patients at their 4 centers in Port-au-Prince.
Across Haiti, many patients are dying because say they’re unable to achieve a hospital in time, health officials say. A spike in gang violence has made it unsafe for people to go away their communities and a scarcity of fuel has shut down public transportation, gas stations and other key businesses including water supply firms.
Enfant sat next to her son’s body as she recalled how Joliva told her he was feeling sick earlier this week. She had already warned him and her two other sons not to wash or wash clothes within the sewage-contaminated waters that ran through a close-by ravine of their neighborhood — the one source of water for a whole bunch in that area.
Enfant insisted that her sons buy water to scrub clothes and add chlorine in the event that they were going to drink it. As Joliva grew sicker, Enfant tried to look after him on her own.
“I told him, ‘Honey, you must drink the tea,’” she recalled. “He said again, ‘I feel weak.’ He also said, ‘I’m not in a position to rise up.’”
Cholera is a bacteria that sickens individuals who swallow contaminated food or water, and it may possibly cause severe vomiting and diarrhea, in some cases resulting in death.
Haiti’s first major brush with cholera occurred greater than a decade ago when U.N. peacekeepers introduced the bacteria into the country’s biggest river via sewage runoff at their base. Nearly 10,000 people died and hundreds of others were sickened.
The cases eventually dwindled to the purpose where the World Health Organization was expected to declare Haiti cholera-free this 12 months.
But on Oct. 2, Haitian officials announced that cholera had returned.
Not less than 40 deaths and 1,700 suspected cases have been reported, but officials imagine the numbers are much higher, especially in crowded and unsanitary slums and government shelters where hundreds of Haitians live.
Worsening the situation is a scarcity of fuel and water that began to dwindle last month when one among Haiti’s strongest gangs surrounded a key fuel terminal and demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Gas stations and businesses including water firms have closed, forcing an increasing number of individuals to depend on untreated water.
Shela Jeune, a 21-year-old hot dog vendor whose 2-year-old son has cholera, said she buys small bags of water for her family but doesn’t know if it’s treated. She carried him to the hospital where he stays on IV fluids.
“The whole lot I give him to eat, he just throws it up,” she said.
Jeune was amongst dozens of moms looking for treatment for his or her children on a recent morning.
Lauriol Chantal, 43, recounted an identical story. Her 15-year-old son would vomit as soon as he finished eating, prompting her to rush him to the treatment center.
While at the middle, her son, Alexandro François, told her he felt hot.
“He said to me … ’Mama, could you are taking me outside to scrub me or pour water over my head?’” she said.
She obliged, but suddenly, he collapsed in her arms. The staff ran over to assist.
Children younger than age 14 make up half of cholera cases in Haiti, in keeping with UNICEF, with officials warning that growing cases of severe malnutrition also make children more vulnerable to illness.
Haiti’s poverty also has worsened the situation.
“If you find yourself unable to get protected drinking water by tap in your personal home, while you don’t have soap or water purifying tablets and you’ve gotten no access to health services, you might not survive cholera or other waterborne diseases,” said Bruno Maes, Haiti’s UNICEF representative.
Perpety Juste, a 62-year-old grandmother, said one among her three grandchildren became sick this week as she fretted about how their situation may need led to her sickness.
“We spent lots of days without food, I cannot lie,” she said. “No one in my house has a job.”
Juste, who lives along with her husband, five children and three grandchildren, said she used to work as a house cleaner until the homeowners fled Haiti.
The increasing demand for assistance is squeezing Doctors Without Borders and others as they struggle to look after patients with limited fuel.
“It’s a nightmare for the population, and likewise for us,” said Jean-Marc Biquet, a project coordinator with the organization. “We now have two more weeks of fuel.”
Life is paralyzed for a lot of Haitians, including Enfant, as she mourned her son’s death. She desires to bury him in her southern coastal hometown of Les Cayes, but cannot afford the 55,000 gourdes ($430) it could cost to move his body.
Enfant then fell quiet and gazed into the space as she continued to take a seat next to her son’s body — too stunned, she said, to rise up.
Associated Press author Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico, contributed to this report.
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