PORT-AU-PRINCE – Earthquake-hit Haiti escaped a fresh disaster threatened by Hurricane Tomas, but the storm caused flooding that killed eight people and increased the threat of contagion from a deadly cholera epidemic.
Amid widespread relief that the hurricane largely spared crowded camps in the Haitian capital which house 1.3 million quake survivors, the international humanitarian operation was turning its attention back to the two-week-old epidemic, which has killed just over 500 people.
“We do expect the infection rate to jump up due to the flooding and to the bad sanitation conditions in many areas,” said Christian Lindmeier, spokesman for the Pan American Health Organisation, the regional part of the World Health Organisation.
“Cholera is a water-borne disease, and so additional water means additional risk,” Mr Lindmeier said.
Tomas skirted Haiti on Friday, flooding some coastal towns, forcing thousands from their homes and soaking camps for displaced people in the capital, Port-au-Prince, with rain. About 10,000 people left their homes to escape floodwaters.
The death toll on this occasion is light compared to those inflicted by hurricanes and storms that battered the western hemisphere’s poorest county in 2004 and 2008, killing several thousand people.
After skirting Haiti, Tomas swept over the Turks and Caicos Islands early on Saturday as a tropical storm.
There were no immediate reports of serious damage or casualties. By late Saturday, it had regained hurricane strength over the open Atlantic, but posed no threat to territories. – (Reuters)