U.N. reports increase in cholera cases in Haiti as rains begin

In a monthly bulletin (.pdf) on the humanitarian response in Haiti, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that an increase of new cholera cases has been recorded in the western and northern parts of the country and "that Haitian health officials recorded 77 new cases a day for the whole country in early March, when the rains began," the Associated Press/USA Today reports. "The new cholera cases come after a steady decline since June of last year when aid workers saw peaks of more than 1,000 cases on certain days," the news agency writes.

The effectiveness of medical teams working to slow the spread of cholera "has been hampered in part by little coordination and an absence of salaries paid to people working in cholera treatment centers run by Haitian authorities, the U.N. bulletin said," according to the AP (Daniel, 4/3). The bulletin notes that nearly 531,000 people have been infected with cholera, and the disease has killed more than 7,000 people since the outbreak began in October 2010 (4/2).