At least 208 people have died in a cholera epidemic in Haiti, authorities said Saturday, as thousands of people overwhelmed hospitals and clinics in the impoverished country."We have recorded more than 208 dead," Gabriel Thimote, the ministry's director general, said at a news conference.
He said most of the victims were in the rural Artibonite region of central Haiti, the focus of the first cholera outbreak the country has seen in over a century.
More than 3,000 people were being treated at hospitals and medical centers, in many cases overwhelming available medical personnel, Haitian health authorities said.
More than 50 inmates at a prison in the center of the country have been infected with cholera, and three inmates have died, officials said.
"The situation is under control. The population should not give in to panic, but people must take hygienic measures seriously," said Jocelyne Pierre-Louis, a physician with the health ministry.
So far the outbreak appeared to be contained in the rural center of the country with 194 of the deaths reported in the Artibonite region and 14 in the central region.
Contamination of the Artibonite river, an artery crossing Haiti's rural center that thousands of people use for much of their daily activities from washing to cooking, was believed to be at the source of the epidemic.
But the rapid spread of the disease, which is caused by a bacterial infection in the small intestines, raised fears of a much larger health emergency, particularly if it reaches the camps around Port-au-Prince housing hundreds of thousands left homeless from Haiti's devastating January 12 quake.
"It is a scenario of catastrophe," Mirlande Manigat, the frontrunner in Haiti's presidential elections, told broadcaster Radio-Canada during a visit to Montreal.