PORT-AU-PRINCE Thu Nov 11, 2010 3:07pm EST
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - The death toll in Haiti's cholera epidemic climbed on Thursday, reaching 800, according to a U.S. medical expert who expressed concern about risk of transmission to the United States and other countries.
...
Ezra Barzilay, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the health emergency created by the epidemic was worsening.
"As of November 8, we had about 640 deaths. Today we are at 800," he said in a call from Haiti to participants at a medical conference in Biloxi, Mississippi.
"The situation here is more dire every day. Haitians are in line (for treatment). Hospital beds are gone. Hospitals are completely overrun," he said, adding local medical staff were being forced into choices over which patients they treated.
...Ten deaths had been recorded in the capital Port-au-Prince, where authorities fear contagion in crowded camps housing earthquake survivors.
In his call to the Biloxi conference, CDC's Barzilay said U.S. health authorities were worried about the possibility of cholera spreading to Haiti's neighbors, including the United States, just two hours flying time away...
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