Cholera kills over 500 in Haiti

In Haiti, heavy rains from Hurricane Tomas caused flooding which is expected to overflow the Artibonite river, prompting the evacuation of families living along the waterway.

The Artibonite is seen by many as the source of the cholera epidemic which has killed some 500 people and hospitalized thousands since appearing in the country last month.

Head of Communications for Caritas Internationalis, Patrick Nicholson, says that aid agencies are now facing the difficulty of changing the focus of their efforts to take care of this new issue.

“We need to redeploy some of our resources,” he says, “some of the work that we were doing on earthquake reconstruction now has to be switched to more emergency humanitarian relief so that lives can be saved, and that is of course leaving gaps in our program.”