GENEVA—There have been 16 confirmed deaths from cholera in Haiti and 32 confirmed cases, a United Nations spokesperson said on Tuesday, citing the latest figures from U.N. humanitarian workers there.
“We are very, very concerned,” Margaret Harris of the World Health Organization, who spoke at a news conference with the U.N. spokesperson, added with reference to cholera outbreaks in Haiti and beyond.
The disease killed some 10,000 people through a 2010 outbreak that has been blamed on a U.N. peacekeeping force. The Pan American Health Organization in 2020 said Haiti had gone a year with no confirmed cholera cases.
Cholera causes uncontrollable diarrhea.
The disease is typically spread by water contaminated with the feces of a sick person, meaning that clean drinking water is critical for preventing its spread.
Troops from Nepal, where cholera is endemic, were in Haiti as part of a U.N. peacekeeping force established in 2004 after the overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The force size was increased after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.
The U.N. in 2016 apologized for the outbreak, without taking responsibility.
An independent panel appointed by then-U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon issued a 2011 report that did not determine conclusively how cholera was introduced to Haiti.
The panel members in 2013 independently published an article that concluded personnel associated with the U.N. peacekeeping mission were “the most likely source.”
