Date of Award

8-11-2015

Degree Type

Capstone Project

Degree Name

Master of Public Health (MPH)

Department

Public Health

First Advisor

Dr Lee Rivers Mobley

Second Advisor

Dr Matt Hayat

Third Advisor

Dr Betsy Kagey

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. Haiti has been subject too many disasters such as the earthquake in January 2010 and ten months later was the introduction of the cholera which as affected over 700,000 people and claimed the life of more than 8,000 other people. For this study, my objectives is to understand the dynamics of the distribution of the cholera cases, the distribution of the proportion of cases hospitalized and the distribution of the case fatality rate based on the location and the season from the period of 81 weeks from October 31st 2011 to May 20th 2013.

METHODS AND RESULTS. Weekly data were obtained from the Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) website from October 31st, 2011 to May 20th 2013 in 140 locations in Haiti. Of the total cholera cases (n=122427) studied, 59.39% were hospitalized, and there were 864 deaths total caused by cholera. Although there were more cases of cholera in the urban areas (n=65046) compared to the rural areas (n=57381), of the cholera cases hospitalized, 31.75% resided in rural areas and 27.63% in urban areas. Furthermore, a higher percentage of total deaths and hospital deaths were recorded in the rural areas with 0.46% and 0.35% respectively. To evaluate the distribution of the cholera outcomes based on the location type (urban-rural) and season type (dry-rain) I used the Wilcoxon rank sum test as the data appeared not normally distributed.

CONCLUSION. My findings suggest that more interventions should be made available in the rural locations of Haiti and mostly during the rainy seasons as oppose to the urban locations and during the dry seasons due to the burden of the cholera on the Haitian population; where a much higher number of cholera cases were found in the rural areas and during the rainy seasons.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/7209149

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