Haiti Update

Aid workers and doctors in Haiti are scrambling to keep the country's cholera outbreak from reaching the capital, but it will be a difficult task given the widespread squalid living conditions and tightly packed refugees.

It should be possible to keep an outbreak of cholera out of Haiti's capital, but the potentially deadly disease remains a major risk, an international aid worker told CNN on Monday.


"I think we'll be able to contain it fairly well, but it is a risk, it is a major risk," said Jason Erb, deputy country director for the International Medical Corps.

The fast-moving outbreak has claimed at least 253 lives on the impoverished island nation, which has yet to recover from January's massive earthquake. Another 3,015 cases have been reported, according to Haiti's Health Ministry.

Even if the disease can be kept out of the capital, Port-au-Prince, it remains a serious risk in the tent camps that remain home to tens of thousands of earthquake survivors, Erb warned.

"It's a danger because the camps are so crowded and so unhygienic," he said on CNN's "American Morning."

Even if the disease is contained in the areas south of Port-au-Prince, that still means tens of thousands of Haitians risk contracting it, and thousands could die from a preventable disease.

The situation in Haiti will not improve anytime soon, either.  The country still has no real infrastructure.  It's chaos at best, anarchy at worst.  They need significant help.

Help that will almost certainly be too late for many.