Via DiarioLibre.com: Authorities are on the watch for cholera. Excerpt:
Public Health authorities, tourism businessmen, merchants along the frontier, and local governments reported that they are on the lookout on preventive measures against cholera. According to official numbers, cholera has taken more than 337 lives and hospitalized another 4,764 in Haiti. For the Minister of Health, Bautista Rojas Gomez, the latest information on the epidemic seems to indicate that the cases are going down. Nonetheless, he reported that the educational program will continue, and all cases of diarrhea that arrive at local medical centers are necessarily reported into the system.
Other measures are that all public hospitals have specific areas as well as the proper medicines and equipment to deal with any situation.
SANTIAGO, Dominican Republic – Twenty-three people from among a group of 87 Haitians being transported illegally on a truck from their country to the Dominican Republic were injured in a traffic accident, the National Police said Monday.
The Haitians were aboard a truck being driven by Alberto Peña Rodriguez, a Dominican who managed to escape, police said, adding that his assistant, Idilio de Santos, was seriously injured in the accident.
The injured Haitians and the Dominican were taken first to the municipal hospital in Villa Vasquez, a town in the northwestern province of Montecristi, but they were later transported to Jose Maria Cabral y Baez Regional Hospital in the city of Santiago because of the severity of their injuries.
Some of the Haitians told police they left a town near Port-au-Prince last Wednesday, paying $9,000 to be smuggled into the Dominican Republic.
The Haitians who were not injured in the accident were detained and will be deported, police said.
Despite the tight border controls imposed by officials to prevent the spread of cholera from Haiti, where the disease has killed more than 300 people, trafficking of Haitians continues at the same rate as before, non-governmental organizations in the northwestern Dominican Republic said Monday.
Dominican officials estimate that around 1 million Haitians live in the country, most of them illegal immigrants who work in agriculture and construction.
The Dominican Republic and Haiti share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, with Haiti in the western portion. Though both countries are poor, Haiti is destitute, and Haitians cross the border to do work that many Dominicans will not do, such as harvesting sugar cane.
Haitians have been the target of mob violence numerous times in recent years, and the Dominican government has been widely criticized for its treatment of the migrants.
Source: Latin American Herald Tribune
The news has also hit the Chinese news channels
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