Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, December 16, 1993 TAG: 9312160055
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN DONNELLY KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LA BRILLERE, HAITI LENGTH: Medium
He is treating scores of people for anthrax - almost never seen in the developed world but passed on from sick livestock to people too poor or too hungry to destroy and burn the tainted animals.
"It is killing a lot of people here. I see as many as eight new cases a day," said Edouard Nemorin, 56, at his dirt-floored clinic in this village. "Some people get badly, badly swollen, and then they die suddenly, like that." He snapped his fingers.
One hospital alone reported about a dozen deaths in the past two months.
Anthrax is so infectious and lethal that several nations stockpile it as a weapon. An accidental release of anthrax spores from a Soviet research center in 1979 killed hundreds; the Pentagon called it perhaps the world's most deadly biological accident.
If ingested by eating bad meat, the Bacillus anthracis bug rips through the digestive tract, causing grotesque bloating that can be fatal in 36 hours, doctors say. Physicians in northern Haiti speak of faces that balloon to nearly twice their normal size and tongues that grow as long as a cow's tongue.
The disease flourished in the Middle Ages but is now relatively rare.
"We thought anthrax was cured. We thought it was gone from here - and everywhere else," said Bill Clemmer, a U.S. physician who works in a northern Haiti hospital. "If there was ever two or three cases in the United States, U.S. authorities would be up in arms. They'd send teams of investigators."
Rare outbreaks of anthrax still occur in developing nations. Eighty died in Ghana in 1988. Five died in Haiti from 1985 to 1988. The last U.S. case was in 1980.
Health-care workers blame the current outbreak on the steady deterioration of conditions over several years, not just the instability wrought by the 1991 military coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
"There is a breakdown in the structure of this society," said a U.S. doctor who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. "It's another symptom of the infrastructure collapsing in Haiti."
Preventing anthrax is simple: vaccinate all goats, cattle and horses. Haiti requires those vaccinations, prohibits slaughter of unvaccinated animals and mandates burning of animals suspected of having anthrax.
But who is enforcing law these days? Who is running the vaccination programs?
For several years, say villagers, the vaccination program has fallen apart.
And even though word of the epidemic is widespread, some Haitians are slaughtering sick animals and taking a chance on eating the meat, health workers say.
by CNB