Haiti's Cholera Outbreak Spreading to South America and Florida

Haiti's Cholera Outbreak Spreading to South America and Florida: "The cholera epidemic that developed in Haiti became a multifocal event as it spread throughout South America, due to factors such as air travel and immigration that act as 'vectors' of infectious disease, a new report suggests.

The findings were reported by Jennifer Malaty, from the Georgetown University Medical Center, in Arlington, Virginia, here at the IMED 2011: International Meeting on Emerging Diseases and Surveillance.

'Cholera's sudden emergence in the Americas and the Caribbean after 100 years of silence was a tragic reminder of how mobile pathogens have become,' Ms. Malaty told Medscape Medical News. 'The [Haitian] population also had the disadvantage of being immunologically naïve,' she said.

According to the researchers, local laboratories and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that the form of cholera detected in Haiti is commonly found in South Asia and Africa, and that the outbreak originated from contaminated water near a facility that housed Nepalese troops.

Subsequent to the cholera outbreak in Haiti, the migration of humans led to sporadic clusters of cholera cases in new and previously unaffected regions."