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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (May 25, 2016)
May 25, 2016 The Skanner Page 9 News Concern in Haiti Over Emerging Condition Linked to Zika Haiti’s health ministry has reported no cases of microcephaly but 11 cases of Guillian-Barre syndrome DAVID McFADDEN, Associated Press AP PHOTO/DIEU NALIO CHERY MIREBALAIS, Haiti — Berny Saint-Sauveur was moaning and incoher- ent when his family car- ried him into a hospital in central Haiti. He was unable to move, he later found out, because of an unusual paralysis syn- drome linked to the mos- quito-borne Zika virus. “I thought I was a dead man,” Saint-Sauveur re- called in an interview from his hospital bed, wearily rubbing blood- shot eyes. ready being completely under-resourced to deal with any developmental challenge a child has?” asked Dr. Louise Ivers, a senior health and policy adviser for Boston-based Partners in Health. Haiti announced its first cases of Zika on Jan. 15. By April 23, there were 2,214 suspected cases, the number of accompa- nying neurological dis- orders is a big unknown. “Haiti is a bit of a black box and I’m not sure anyone has their arms around what’s really happening currently,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medi- cine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. Even after the worst cholera epidemic in re- cent history, Haiti’s se- verely under-resourced health sector still does not have routine data collection systems that In this May 21 photo, a vendor combs another woman’s hair next to a water canal full of rubbish, fertile ground for mosquito- borne diseases, near a street market in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Haiti’s government has stepped up fumigation and public service announcements about the importance of getting rid of mosquito breeding grounds, but mosquito control is minimal compared to more developed nations. After two weeks, the 46-year-old rice farm- er was recovering from the nervous system illness known as Guil- lain-Barre and about to be discharged from the hospital in Mirebalais. Doctors and scientists, meanwhile, are bracing for the possibility of a wave of rare disorders triggered by Zika in an impoverished country that has faced one public health crisis after anoth- er and is fertile ground for mosquito-borne scourges. Zika causes mild symp- toms such as rash and fever in most people, but when Brazil reported outbreaks for the first time last year, doctors saw a dramatic increase in Guillain-Barre and a severe birth defect called microcephaly resulting in infants with abnor- mally small heads. The World Health Organi- zation says there is now scientific consensus that Zika is a cause of both disorders. Haiti’s health ministry has reported no cases of microcephaly but 11 cases of Guillain-Barre, including two definitive- ly linked to Zika by lab tests. But the extent of Haiti’s Zika outbreak and would allow experts to track and document dis- ease outbreaks across one of the world’s poor- est countries. Frontline physicians in Haiti say the assumption is that the uptick of Guil- lain-Barre cases is due to Zika because it coincides with the spreading ep- idemic. The WHO says Guillain-Barre reports have increased in 13 countries or territories where Zika is circulating. “Since around the fall of 2015 we began seeing cases of Guillain-Barre that we had not seen prior to that point,” said Dr. Nessa Meshkaty, an infectious disease physi- cian working in the Part- ners in Health hospital in Mirebalais. Some experts worry a relatively large number of microcephaly cases could hit Haiti later this year when women infect- ed in early 2016 start giv- ing birth. Health experts are try- ing to figure out what, if anything, they can do to prepare other than train- ing staff to look out for symptoms. “What are we going to do in Haiti if we have an epidemic of children with developmental de- lays in the context of al- including 12 among preg- nant women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Pre- vention. By comparison, Puer- to Rico, a U.S. Caribbean island which has a third of Haiti’s population and is located about 380 miles (600 kilometers) to the east, has had 925 confirmed cases of Zika, including one related death and a case of mi- crocephaly in a fetus. The neighboring Do- minican Republic has seen roughly 100 cases of Guillain-Barre, includ- ing six recent fatalities. The syndrome kills about one in 20 patients. New research suggest- ing that the Zika virus has been present in Haiti since 2014 adds a layer of complexity to the epide- miological mystery. Dr. John Lednicky, a re- searcher at the Universi- ty of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, was part of a team that found Zika in the plasma of three Haitian youngsters some two years before Haiti announced its first cases.
