Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) continues to step up its response to the growing number of patients in Port-au-Prince experiencing the clinical symptoms of cholera.

MSF doctors check a cholera patient. [?Francois Servranckx/MSF]

As is the case in other MSF health facilities, rising numbers of patients have been admitted to Choscal Hospital, a Haitian Ministry of Public Health hospital in Cité Soleil, due to acute watery diarrhea and vomiting—both of which are symptoms of cholera infection. The MSF-supported hospital has received hundreds of cases over the past five days. "Yesterday we recorded 216 separate cases of cholera arriving at the hospital, while the total number recorded just 5 days ago was 30," said Stefano Zannini, MSF head of mission in Haiti, on Thursday. "Patients are coming from everywhere, throughout the city, slums and wealthier areas."

Haiti cholera outbreak

Onset is often very sudden. "I was just preparing to leave my house when I started to vomit," said a man named Julien, a 43-year-old father who arrived at the hospital less than 12 hours after his symptoms struck. "I thought it would stop, but instead it got worse. Ever since, I've not been able to stop going to the bathroom." By the time he reached the hospital, he was already too weak to stand and could barely talk.

"I'm ashamed to have caught a disease for which the first line of defense is good hygiene," he says with his head down. Nonetheless, his wife, stranding at his bedside, was rejoicing that he could speak again. "I had lost all hope," she said. "This hospital saved my husband."