Peru meets a menace.

• Author: Goethals, Henry
• Position: Cholera epidemic in Chimbote, Peru - Column

The disease spread like wildfire, but the news spread even faster: cholera in Peru. It was the first cholera epidemic in the Americas in 50 years. Initially identified in Chimbote, a fishing village some 200 miles north of Lima, on January 31, by mid-March the epidemic had claimed more than 258 victims in Peru alone. Another 55,000 (Peruvians) were sick with the disease and 20 cases had been reported in Ecuador.

Although unable to pinpoint the source of the epidemic, the Peruvian Health Ministry in mid-February reported that more than 80 percent of the cholera victims at that time had eaten seafood before falling ill. Ministry officials also report that the disease was being transmitted through the consumption of sewer-contaminated water.

As the epidemic spread quickly from Chimbote south along the coastline to Lima and into the interior, the Peruvian...