Azoumounou : Conjunctivitis is Everywhere in Haiti

These days everyone in Haiti is talking about the dreaded eye sickness "AZOUMOUNOU". You wake up one day and your eyes are so itchy, you go to sleep and wake your with your eyes lids stick together...

Azoumounou - Pink Eye - Conjunctivitis in Haiti
Azoumounou - Pink Eye - Conjunctivitis in Haiti

If you spot a Haitian walking around with a dark sunglasses and a handkerchief, most likely he has azoumounou... LOL...

Azoumounou, as they call it in Haiti, is conjunctivitis or pink eye. There are various types of conjunctivitis but the one Haitians call azoumounou resembles bacterial conjunctivitis.

Here is what wikipedia says about bacterial conjunctivitis:

Bacterial conjunctivitis causes the rapid onset of conjunctival redness, swelling of the eyelid, and mucopurulent discharge. Typically, symptoms develop first in one eye, but may spread to the other eye within 2-5 days.

Bacterial conjunctivitis due to common pyogenic (pus-producing) bacteria causes marked grittiness/irritation and a stringy, opaque, greyish or yellowish mucopurulent discharge that may cause the lids to stick together, especially after sleep.

Severe crusting of the infected eye and the surrounding skin may also occur. The gritty and/or scratchy feeling is sometimes localized enough for patients to insist they must have a foreign body in the eye.

Read more about conjunctivitis here.

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