CNN news 2010-10-26 加文本

cnn news 2010-10-26

Hi, I'm Joyce Joseph. Carl Azuz is off today. I hope you're ready for some traveling, 'cause cnn Student News is about to take you around the world. Our first stop: Haiti.

Government and health officials are trying to help thousands of sick people there who have all been diagnosed with cholera. It's an illness caused by a bacteria, and people usually get it from food or water that's been contaminated. Cholera can be treated. But in severe cases, the disease can be fatal. More than 250 people have died from this cholera outbreak in Haiti. Part of the problem is that parts of Haiti haven't recovered from that massive earthquake back in January. People are still living in tents, and they don't have access to clean water. Paula Newton is in Haiti. She has more for us on the situation down there and how officials are trying to deal with this outbreak.

Health professionals know that they may be at a tipping point with this outbreak. They want to do all they can to contain it. What does that mean? It means being here in Port-au-Prince, where tens of thousands are still in tent cities sprawled all over the city.They are stepping up the sanitation at latrines. They are opening hand centers in order to clean your hands. They are having water deliveries to these areas. They are also having trucks on standby in order to take people throughout the night to hospitals if they feel sick. And they are setting up, as a precautionary measure, quarantine areas.

The situation in Saint Marc, north, rural, in a rural area to the north of Port-au-Prince, the situation still quite desperate there. The most frustrating thing has been for relatives who get to the hospital with their loved ones, sick, and they end up dying still. Why? The hospital there is completely overwhelmed. Having said that, aid agencies working in conjunction with the Haitian government and the U.N. are trying to get more supplies over some very tough terrain. Rehydration supplies, trying to get medical professionals up there to be able to tend to these people. They hope that the situation will improve quite a bit in the next 24 to 48 hours.

The problem, though, is that they are really keeping an eye on the numbers. They want to make sure that they are able to contain this outbreak, because that's when the problems begin. They have so many people, more than a million people, still here affected by

 the earthquake, living in already what are not very hygienic conditions, and that is what frightens them.

Paula Newton, cnn, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.