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While the cholera outbreak that has so far killed 259 in Haiti is , the capital Port-au-Prince is for the disease’s arrival. Can treatment reach people in time to prevent more deaths?

Emergency supplies of clean water, soap and contained the initial outbreak – the gut bacterium spreads via water contaminated with faeces. But poor sanitation in the capital’s refugee camps leaves the 1.3 million left homeless after January’s massive earthquakes highly vulnerable to disease.

Clean water supplies prevented cholera after several recent disasters. The watery diarrhoea caused by the gut infection can kill by dehydration within hours. But antibiotics will cure cholera, or sick people can be treated with clean water, salt and sugar.

Until this outbreak, cholera was absent from Haiti for decades, but worldwide it every year, killing 100,000. Flooding heightens the risk – the Haitian outbreak hit a flooded region. Last week there were 500 cases in where flooding exacerbated the outbreak and 38,000 cases so far this year in Nigeria, 10 times the usual number.