PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, CMC – The number of people who have died since the cholera outbreak in late October has risen to 2,591 according to figures released by Ministry of Health here yesterday.

It said that a total of 121,518 people have been affected by the water borne disease with 63,711 having received treatment at various hospitals.

Health officials in Haiti and the United States have confirmed that it is an outbreak of cholera that has so far killed more than a hundred people and sent hundreds more to the hospital in a rural area of Haiti.

Even before the test results were confirmed today, aid groups were rushing medical supplies to the hard-hit Artibonite region, racing to stop the outbreak from reaching the densely populated camps around the capital, Port-au-Prince.

The spring of 1832 in Ireland was very mild and wet. When cholera struck Dublin it quickly spread into an epidemic because the city was overcrowded with slums. Temporary hospitals were set up all over the city; panic gripped the people as they saw everyone around them dying, some within only a few hours of getting the disease. The first symptoms were stomach cramps, followed by hallucinations and convulsions, then death would be very rapid. The spread of the disease was unchecked because large families of up to fourteen people were living in one room in the many tenements around the city.