Haiti is facing a surge in cholera cases in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, doctors warned as the death toll on the devastated island climbed past 1,000.
U.S. Marines delivered badly-needed food aid Sunday, after Haiti’s government said more than 1.5 million people had been affected by the storm and 350,000 of those were in need of immediate assistance.
Ninety percent of crops have been destroyed in worst-hit areas of the country according to U.N. World Food Program officer for Haiti, Lorene Didier.
Throughout Haiti’s southwestern peninsula, people were digging themselves out from the wreckage of the storm, which also brought flooding and at least 21 deaths to the United States.
Haiti’s National Civil Protection agency in Port-au-Prince said Sunday that its official death toll for the country was 336, which included 191 deaths in Grand-Anse. However, a tally of numbers from local officials, compiled by Reuters, put the number at more 1,000. NBC News could not independently confirm that figure.
At the Port-a-Piment hospital, survivors carried in a string of weak and severely sick patients with symptoms of cholera.
Missole Antoine, the hospital’s medical director, said the number of patients admitted with cholera symptoms had doubled to 60 during Sunday and that four people had died of the waterborne illness.
Source-NBC
