News

TB in Haiti After the Earthquake


4 Feb 2010
by Working Group

Sommervil Webert, 24, is a tuberculosis patient in the makeshift clinic in Port-au-Prince. (photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)
Sommervil Webert, 24, is a tuberculosis patient in the makeshift clinic in Port-au-Prince.
(photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Even before the recent earthquake shook large portions of Haiti to rubble, the country already had the highest tuberculosis rate in the Americas (roughly 30,000 new cases each year). With the health infrastructure now mostly in ruins, TB is likely to rise even further.

The New York Times’ Ian Urbina writes how the country’s sole tuberculosis sanatorium is now staffed by a single man, a former nurse, who was the only person to return to the hospital after the quake. He needs help. With people living in tightly packed makeshift shelters, a high degree of HIV co-infection and drug-resistant TB strains on the rise, the situation in Haiti could quickly develop into something much worse.

> Read the full story here at the NY Times website.

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