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Haiti set to battle cholera with vaccine amid questions
The Associated Press
Date: Wednesday Nov. 9, 2011 6:22 AM ET
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti <!-- /dateline -->? Haiti's two most prominent health care organizations are preparing a new assault on the country's deadly cholera epidemic: the dispatch of hundreds of workers to remote villages and gritty alleys in the capital to administer a vaccine against the raging disease.
But the pilot project, which has not yet secured the $870,000 it is estimated to cost, has set off a debate among some public health experts who question the wisdom of a program that will inoculate only 1 per cent of the population and could deplete the world's stock of available cholera vaccine, potentially putting people at risk in other vulnerable places.
Experts also wonder whether it will even be possible to successfully administer a vaccine that must be given in two dosages two weeks apart.
They contend the money is best spent cleaning up the waterways that have allowed cholera to flourish in Haiti.
"Everybody thinks it's going to do some good," said Richard Garfield, a professor of public health and nursing at Columbia University. "But it's hard to specify how much good and benefit will come out of that ... There are bigger-bang-for-the-buck activities out there."
Partners in Health, based in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Gheskio Center, a health non-profit that has historically focused on AIDS, are joining in the vaccine campaign, hoping it will save lives.
Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20111109/haiti-battles-cholera-with-vaccine-111109/#ixzz1dJbkENxU
The Associated Press
Date: Wednesday Nov. 9, 2011 6:22 AM ET
<!-- dateline -->
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti <!-- /dateline -->? Haiti's two most prominent health care organizations are preparing a new assault on the country's deadly cholera epidemic: the dispatch of hundreds of workers to remote villages and gritty alleys in the capital to administer a vaccine against the raging disease.
But the pilot project, which has not yet secured the $870,000 it is estimated to cost, has set off a debate among some public health experts who question the wisdom of a program that will inoculate only 1 per cent of the population and could deplete the world's stock of available cholera vaccine, potentially putting people at risk in other vulnerable places.
Experts also wonder whether it will even be possible to successfully administer a vaccine that must be given in two dosages two weeks apart.
They contend the money is best spent cleaning up the waterways that have allowed cholera to flourish in Haiti.
"Everybody thinks it's going to do some good," said Richard Garfield, a professor of public health and nursing at Columbia University. "But it's hard to specify how much good and benefit will come out of that ... There are bigger-bang-for-the-buck activities out there."
Partners in Health, based in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Gheskio Center, a health non-profit that has historically focused on AIDS, are joining in the vaccine campaign, hoping it will save lives.
Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20111109/haiti-battles-cholera-with-vaccine-111109/#ixzz1dJbkENxU