December 8, 2010 | 8:00 AM | By

No new evidence, but UN again blamed for Haiti cholera

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, CDC, cholera, Haiti, Rita Colwell, United Nations

UN

UN Peacekeeper, Haiti

Haiti is in crisis, in the middle of a muddled election for the next president of this devastated nation, and the media are doing their own muddling regarding the source of its ongoing cholera outbreak.

The epidemic has so far killed more than 2,100, sickened maybe 100,000 and is expected to continue spreading for months.

A Nepalese UN peacekeeping team was accused of bringing cholera with them and spreading it due to improper sanitation. This caused attacks on the UN peacekeepers, rioting and some deaths. Testing of the bacteria by the CDC identified it as a South Asian strain and many concluded the UN team were indeed the culprits.

But some top cholera experts, in fact, believe the outbreak is too big and widespread to have come from a single point source. I posted on this alternative view earlier and talked with one of the scientists, Rita Colwell, former head of the National Science Foundation. Colwell says of the idea that UN troops caused this:

“It’s almost certainly incorrect…. The pattern of distribution and rapid spread across a large area indicates it was already present.”

The UN says the Nepalese troops have tested negative for cholera as have their latrines and water supplies in the suspect camp. But these facts and this alternative view have not gotten much attention.

Meanwhile, the UN blame game has re-emerged.

The Washington Post today has the headline “UN Peacekeepers called likely source of cholera.” This is based on the assessment of a French scientist, Renaud Piarroux, who didn’t actually identify the source as the UN but said “no other hypothesis could be found.” At the very bottom of the story, it says:

Piarroux could not prove that there was cholera inside the base or among the soldiers. But he also hinted strongly at a coverup.

The Times of India and the BBC were even more certain, with the BBC saying “Haiti cholera: UN peacekeepers to blame” and the Times of India also concluding “UN Troops brought cholera to Haiti.” The Times reports:

There is no other way to explain the rapid emergence and strength of the cholera outbreak in a small town with just a few dozen inhabitants, Piarroux and his team concluded.

A few other media were less conclusive, such as CNN International reporting that the “French report about origin of cholera inconclusive.” The CNN report quotes a CDC expert, Eric Mintz:
“To date, I am aware of no evidence whatsoever that would suggest the strain in Haiti is unique to Nepal….  Vibrio cholerae strains do not get their passports stamped when they cross an international border, and there are many strains in circulation around the globe at any given time.”

Mintz said researchers around the world (including Colwell’s lab and the CDC) are still studying the evidence in an effort to determine the source of the outbreak. He suggested nobody draw any conclusions yet.

  • David L. Wilson

    A French cholera expert goes to Haiti in November, visits the sites where the cholera epidemic broke out, and interviews medical personnel, officials and local residents. He concludes that the epidemic must have started with wastes from the base UN troops maintain outside Mirebalais in the Central Plateau. He calls for a “judicial investigation.”

    Mr. Paulson says that this is not “new evidence”?

    You have to wonder how well Mr. Paulson has researched this issue. Has he read Dr. Piarroux’s report (which is available online in French)? Dr. Piarroux “didn’t actually identify the source as the UN but said ‘no other hypothesis could be found,’” Mr. Paulson writes. In fact, Dr. Piarroux makes the remark about “no other hypothesis” at the end of a lengthy paragraph detailing the evidence pointing to the UN base as the source of the infection. He notes that he and his team looked for “another explanation, even an improbable one, [that] could be advanced to explain the sudden occurrence of this cholera epidemic.”

    Mr. Paulson, on the other hand, continues to promote the other, improbable explanations that he advanced in an earlier post. Maybe the South Asian of the bacterium arrived in a ship’s ballast—but how did the ship’s ballast get from the coast to Mirebalais, where the outbreak started? Maybe it was from contaminated food or imported water—but how much food and water does Haiti import from South Asia? Or was it caused by “changes in weather patterns, climate and the water environment of a community”? The day after Mr. Paulson’s December 8 post, the New England Journal of Medicine carried a report from a team that did research on the cholera bacterium’s genome sequences. Based on their data, the researchers dismissed as “unlikely” the idea that “the local aquatic environment” or “climatic events” caused the epidemic.

    For more information, along with links to the original reports, see:
    http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2010/12/wnu-1060-specialist-confirms-un-caused.html

    • David L. Wilson

      I omitted a word. In the fourth paragraph, I meant to write: “Maybe the South Asian strain of the bacterium arrived in a ship’s ballast.”