Dominican Republic Seals Border With Haiti

(Oct. 26) -- The Dominican Republic has sealed its border with Haiti following the deaths there of more than 250 people in a sudden, devastating outbreak of cholera .

The announcement came Monday as the Dominican government bolstered military patrols along the 130-mile border with Haiti and U.N. troops fired tear gas to disperse a throng of Haitians trying to cross into the northwest town of Dajabon, reported the English-language Dominican Today.

Thousands of Haitian merchants and shoppers were turned back Monday by Dominican authorities on the border near Dajabon after a traditional bi-national market was canceled because of the epidemic, the Latin American Herald Tribune reported.

Rafael Salas, the provincial director of the Public Health Ministry, said the measure was intended to protect Dominicans from the disease spread by contaminated food and water. No cholera cases have been reported thus far in that country. Haiti shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.

Only students and Dominican visa-holders would be allowed to cross the border, and only after they had washed their hands and been check by health workers at entry checkpoints.

Despite the Haitian government's recent announcement that the epidemic had been contained, world health experts said they expected the disease to spread beyond the current number of about 3,000 diagnosed cases.

"Now that cholera has established itself with a strong foothold in Haiti, it is clear to us that it will not go away for several years," said Dr. John Andrus of the Pan American Health Organization at a news briefing Monday in Washington, The New York Times reported.

The actual number of cases could be much higher, Andrus said, because about 75 percent of infected people have no symptoms. They can carry the bacteria for two weeks and shed them back into the environment, where they can infect others, which is most likely to occur when sanitation is poor and clean drinking water not available.

Such is the case in many parts of the impoverished country, most notably in tent camps housing 1.3 million Haitians left homeless by January's massive earthquake that devastated the capital of Port-au-Prince.