The death toll in Haiti's cholera outbreak rose to 796 on Friday, with 13 people succumbing to the disease in the ravaged capital, the health ministry said.
Another 12,300 people were being treated for the illness across the Caribbean nation, the ministry said in a statement posted on its website giving the toll up to November 10.
Since the first cholera cases were reported in late October, the daily numbers of deaths and patients suffering from the water-borne disease has relentlessly grown as the illness stalks the quake-hit country.
There are now mounting fears that cholera will take hold in the squalid camps housing some 1.3 million people left homeless by the January quake, which also killed some 250,000 Haitians mainly in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Most of the deaths have so far been recorded in the northern region of Artibonite, where the cholera was first detected, and it is believed to be spreading thanks to the waters of the Artibonite river.
So far only 13 people have died in the area of the teeming capital city, including it's largest slum Cite Soleil, and its suburbs. Almost three million people live in and around Port-au-Prince, including more than a million in the unsanitary tent cities which sprung up after the earthquake.
The United Nations on Friday appealed for nearly 164 million dollars in aid to tackle the growing cholera outbreak, and stop the country being "overrun" by the epidemic.
Share This Article With Planet Earth
