Haiti cholera deaths over 500

Acholeraoutbreak in Haiti haskilled morethan 500people, the World Health Organization said Sunday.

More than 7,000 people have fallenillwith the waterborne disease in a country now cleaningup from flooding brought on by Hurricane Tomas last week.

The storm hit parts of western Haiti on Friday and is blamed for eight deaths.

The cholera outbreak began in northern Haiti about three weeks ago, but health authorities say there have been more cases since the hurricane struck. Contaminated water is a major source of the cholera bacteria.

Ariver that has been a source ofthe cholera epidemic is expected to overflow, officials in Haiti said Sunday.

Engineers were forced to let water pass through a dam on the Artibonite River, UN officials said. People living along the waterway were warned toleave withtheir families and livestock.

On Saturday, President Ren Prval warned the outbreak could grow because of floodwaters.

"The storm has passed," he said. "Now we are bandaging the wounds that the storm has left."

Conditions that help spread cholera have worsened, he said.

"On one side we have the rivers that will carry the bacteria everywhere, and on the other hand, we have the people who have been displaced that could also carry the bacteria."

In Saint Marc, where the first cases appeared, Cuban doctors in charge of a local hospital said medical workershave been seeingmore and more cases during the past 24 hours.

"We are seeing cases of cholera with typhoid fever at the same time," said Dr. Buenaventura Sanchez, one of the doctors workingnorth of the capital.

Tomas inundated camps harbouring earthquake refugees, and inLogne, west of Port-au-Prince, some camps turned into squalid islands. But according to an International Red Cross spokesperson in Logne, "it definitely could have been a lot worse."

In Port-au-Prince, the capital, Tomas turned streets into canals of flowing garbage but spared most campsthat wereset up after the devastating Jan. 12 quake.

Tomas weakened into a tropical storm early Saturday and regained its hurricane strength later in the day with winds of130 km/h,according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The hurricane was about440 kilometres north-northeast of Grand Turk Island late Saturday and was expected to continue moving to the northeast into open water. All storm warnings were discontinued.