Minister of Health visits the border area of Elías Piña; suggests installing sinks and checking food vending posts
Santo Domingo.- The Minister of Public Health, Daniel Rivera. announced that the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) will donate 10,000 doses of antibiotics to the Dominican Republic for the treatment of cholera, despite the fact that the presence of the disease has not been confirmed in the country,
The official insisted that “so far there is no notification in the country, not even of cases of diarrhea” of cholera, but if preventive measures are maintained after the disease was detected in Haitia country with which this nation shares the island of Hispaniola.
A score of people have died from the new outbreak of cholera in Haiti, where the disease was controlled since 2019.
Haiti suffered 12 years ago one of the worst cholera epidemics in recent decades, which cost the lives of almost 10,000 people.
In a statement, the Ministry of Public Health stated that it “continues to implement prevention strategies in order to strengthen surveillance and reduce the chances” that cholera will reach Dominican territory.
On a tour of Elías Piña, a province bordering Haiti, Minister Rivera suggested that local authorities install handwashing stations at this and other border points, “where the movement of immigrants is significant,” the note added.
The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu, said on Wednesday that only safe access to the areas of Port-au-Prince affected by cholera will allow this infectious outbreak to be brought under control.
The WHO believes it is very likely that there are cases prior to the first ones that were detected and that there are currently more people infected than are registered.
