A cholera epidemic in Haiti has killed more than 250 people, the government said on Sunday, but it added the outbreak which has sickened more than 3,000 may be stabilising with fewer deaths and new cases reported over the last 24 hours.
"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, told a news conference.
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, mostly in central rural regions straddling the Artibonite river.
Thimote said that whereas previously the hospital in Saint-Marc in the Artibonite region was recording deaths by dozens, it had registered only one on Saturday. The epidemic is the second emergency to strike the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere this year. A catastrophic Jan. 12 quake killed up to 300,000 people in Haiti, which is only a two-hour flight from the United States.