A top United Nations official said Friday that at least 138 people have died from cholera in Haiti but that medical supplies and health workers are being rushed to the stricken zone.
Catherine Bragg, the UN deputy emergency coordinator, gave the new toll at a press conference at the UN headquarters after returning from a trip to Haiti.
Aid agencies have 300,000 doses of antibiotics in the country ready, Bragg said.
Some 10,000 boxes of water purification tablets, 2,500 jerry cans, and the same number of buckets and hygiene kits are being distributed in the affected area, the official noted.
"The point here is that cholera deaths are preventable, and we are doing everything we can to assist the Haitian authorities to prevent further deaths," she said.
The cholera epidemic has been reported around the city of Saint Marc in the Artibonite department, far from the camps hosting hundreds of thousands of people who lost their homes following the January 12 earthquake which killed a quarter of a million people.
According to Bragg there have been no major disease outbreaks in the quake zone even though some of the camps are "truly awful." She said the major humanitarian operation in Haiti would extend well into 2011.
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