Cholera Outbreak Spreads Toward Haiti's Capital

An outbreak of cholera has spread outside a rural valley in central Haiti, intensifying worries the disease could reach squalid tarp camps that house hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors in the capital. More than 200 have been confirmed dead in the poor Caribbean nation's worst health crisis since the Jan. 12 quake, and authorities said nearly 3,000 were sick.

The cholera outbreak has been centered in the central Artibonite region, but at least five cases were confirmed in Arcahaie, a town closer to Port-au-Prince. "It will be very, very dangerous," says the president of the Haitian Medical Association. "Port-au-Prince already has more than 2.4 million people, and the way they are living is dangerous enough already." (More cholera stories.)