A Naples-area woman has been confirmed as the first Floridian to contract cholera after visiting Haiti, and other potential cases in other areas also are being tested, state health officials said Wednesday. But Department of Health doctors said the woman's infection poses virtually no risk to the public in Florida because U.S. sewer and water systems eliminate the bacteria from drinking water, which is primarily how it spreads.
"We don't anticipate we will see any transmission as a result of exposure in Haiti in Florida or anywhere else in the U.S. … because our water and sanitiation system minimizes the risk," said Dr. Thomas Torok, a disease investigator with the health department.
The only real risk to Floridians would occur if they had direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person, including if the patient worked in a job with public contact, cholera experts said. The woman does not work in such a job.
State health officials declined to say how many other illnesses they are investigating as potential cholera cases, or where those cases have developed. Potential cases in South Florida would not be a surprise, given number of residents here who travel to Haiti.
The infected woman, from Collier County, contracted the disease after a trip to visit relatives in the Artibonite River region of Haiti, where that country's recent outbreak began and has been strongest, Torok said. Haiti's cholera epidemic has killed about 1,100 and hospitalized more than 18,000.
She was hospitalized after returning home and is recovering. "The patient is doing quite well," Torok said.
Cholera can be fatal within hours if not detected and treated early, but most people recover. Symptoms include severe, rapid-onset diarrhea that causes an extreme loss of fluids, potentially leading to shock. Intravenous rehydration with liquids and doses of antibiotics usually defeat the bacteria.
Cholera can develop within a few hours to five days after a person is infected, generally through water and food contaminated with bodily fluids from infected people. It does not spread through the air. Many people have mild or no symptoms.
Since the oubreak began, Florida health officials have been urging doctors, hospitals and testing labs to be on the lookout for signs of cholera, in light of the state's 241,000 Haiti-born residents – 73,000 of whom live in Miami-Dade County and 63,000 in Broward County. Traffic from the state to the island has been heavier than normal since the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
The woman's case was detected and handled quickly, Torok said.
"The clinicians did exactly what we wanted of them," he said.
Florida has weathered past cholera outbreaks without any local impact, Torok said. An outbreak from 1991 to 1993 in Latin America led to 20 Floridians infected as a result of travel there, but no cases were spread through local infection, he said.
On Tuesday, medical authorities in Haiti defended their decision not to focus on finding the origins of the cholera outbreak, which has stoked violent demonstrations against United Nations peacekeepers, whom many people blame for introducing the disease, the New York Times reported today.
Protests that began Monday and carried into Tuesday in some places left two people dead as demonstrators directed their ire at the peacekeepers, a 12,000-strong, multinational force that arrived in Haiti in 2004 in response to political conflict.
Health News Florida, a nonprofit news organization, contributed to this report.
