A plan to stop cholera’s spread
A Harvard medical specialist suggested Monday that relief workers and peacekeepers from cholera-endemic countries should be treated with antibiotics before they serve in other nations, to avoid repeating the Haitian epidemic that has killed thousands. Haiti had been cholera-free for 100 years before the devastating earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince in January 2010. The disaster brought relief workers and United Nations’ peacekeepers from around the world. The cholera epidemic began 10 months after the quake, with the bacterium possibly brought in by a Nepali peacekeeper. The outbreak has so far killed 7,000 and sickened 600,000 in Haiti, with 20,000 more cases in the nearby Dominican Republic. “The most likely conclusion is cholera was introduced in Haiti by a human,” said John Mekalanos, Lehman Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics and head of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology. Mekalanos delivered his comments at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study’s Fay House in...