Cholera claims 250 in Haiti

A CHOLERA epidemic in Haiti has killed more than 250 people, the government said yesterday, as cases were reported for the first time in the capital Port-Au-Prince.

• A cholera sufferer is treated in chaotic conditions in Haiti. Below, burials of victims of the outbreak have begun. Pic: Getty

The accumulated deaths since the cholera outbreak began around a week ago in the earthquake-ravaged Caribbean nation stood at 253, while total cases were 3,015.

The epidemic is the second emergency to strike the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere this year. A catastrophic earthquake on 12 January killed up to 300,000 people in Haiti, which is only a two-hour flight from the United States.

Health officials said there was a chance the spread of the disease was "stabilising".

"We have registered a diminishing in numbers of deaths and of hospitalised people in the most critical areas. The tendency is that it is stabilising, without being able to say that we have reached a peak," Gabriel Thimote, director-general of Haiti's Health Department, said.

UN peacekeepers were erecting cholera treatment centres - large enough to treat 150 cases each - in the main outbreak region of Artibonite, in the overcrowded capital Port-au-Prince and in the Centre province.

The detection of five "imported" cases in Port-au-Prince, involving patients who had travelled south to the city from the central outbreak zone, has raised fears of the virulent diarrhoeal disease spreading in the capital.

Experts see Port-au-Prince's sprawling, squalid slums and tent and tarpaulin camps housing some 1.3 million homeless quake survivors as vulnerable to cholera, which is transmitted via contaminated water and food.

"We are planning for the worst-case scenario here," UNhumanitarian spokeswoman in Haiti, Imogen Wall, said.

The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), the regional office of the World Health Organisation, said cholera cases had been confirmed in Haiti's Artibonite and Centre provinces and in the Oest province, where the capital is located. .

"It is completely normal that it (the outbreak] will expand geographically, we are preparing in Port-au-Prince and the rest of the country," PAHO's top medical officer in Haiti, Dr Michel Thieren, said.

The strategy was to try to contain the main outbreak points, increase prevention measures and be ready to rapidly treat any new infection points.

French-speaking Haiti shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic. While no cholera cases have been reported on the Dominican side, the government there is taking precautionary measures, PAHO said.

The border remains open.

Haiti's government and aid agencies have rushed doctors, nurses, medicines and clean water supplies to affected central regions.

Warning over 'significant threat' of new quake

Pressure could be building for another devastating quake in Haiti, seismic experts have said.

Two papers, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, conclude the fault originally blamed for the quake was not the real source.

"As the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault did not release any significant elastic strain, it remains a significant seismic threat for Haiti," Eric Calais of Purdue University in Indiana and colleagues wrote.

A separate study led by Carol Prentice of the US Geological Survey also said the quake may not have relieved pressure on the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault system. At first, scientists focused on the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault - one of two main faults in the region.