PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Deaths from Haiti’s cholera epidemic approached 300 yesterday, and health experts said the illness would “settle” in the poor Caribbean nation, joining other endemic diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.
The week-old epidemic of the deadly diarrheal disease has so far mostly affected the central Artibonite and Central Plateau regions, with an accumulated 295 deaths and 3,612 cases registered to date, Haitian health authorities said.
Although the number of new deaths and cases has slowed slightly from earlier days, a United Nations-led international medical response is fighting to prevent the outbreak from penetrating Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, which is crowded with 1.3 million homeless survivors of a Jan. 12 earthquake.
The epidemic has jolted the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation with another crisis 9-1/2 months after the catastrophic quake that killed more than half a million people.
It also comes a little over a month before the country is due to hold presidential and legislative elections on Nov. 28. Despite the disease outbreak, the polls were still set to go ahead as scheduled, Pierre-Louis Opont, the director general of Haiti’s provisional electoral council, told Reuters.
