Disease

Haiti Cholera Count

Through July 9, Haiti has reported 21,661 suspected cholera cases and 200 related deaths. In all of 2015, the island country saw 36,644 cholera cases and 321 deaths. Since the cholera outbreak began in October 2010, months after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, 776,633 cases and 9,163 deaths have been recorded. And this cumulative number may be lowballing it, according to a recent study in the journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, which reveals from house-to-house surveys in four communities that there were an estimated nearly three times more cholera deaths in the first six months of the epidemic than officially recorded.

Prior to Oct. 2010, Haiti had not seen a cholera outbreak in a century.

In neighbouring Dominican Republic, 894 cholera cases and 17 deaths have been reported this year to date.

Zika Virus Epidemic in Colombia Over

Colombian health officials declared on Monday that the worst of a Zika outbreak in the Andean nation had passed just 10 months after its arrival, raising questions about how the virus is affecting parts of Latin America differently.

Vice Health Minister Fernando Ruiz told journalists that the number of infections in Colombia has been falling by 600 cases a week. While Zika is still circulating in the country, Colombia considers the drop-off sufficient to say it has moved into an endemic phase from the epidemic phase. Colombia has reported nearly 100,000 cases of infection, with 21 cases of Zika-related microcephaly.

An Aedes Aegypti mosquito