Cholera cases rise

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (CMC):

Health officials on Wed-nesday said that the death toll from the cholera outbreak jumped to more than 400 and more than 1,000 new cases had been detected.

Health ministry official Jocelyne Pierre-Louis told a news con-ference that the 442 deaths were 105 more than had been recorded on Saturday.

He said the total number of people infected had risen by 1,978, bringing the total number of cases to 6,742.

The epidemic has waxed and waned since it first surfaced in the Artibonite Valley in northern Haiti on October 21.

Earlier this week, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention identified the strain of cholera in Haiti as being the same as a strain found in South Asia, deepening the mystery over the source of the island's first cholera epidemic in more than a century.