Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- The United Nations criticized the international response to the Haiti cholera outbreak as inadequate on Saturday, saying donors had pledged only about ten percent of the money needed to curb the disease.
Last week, the world body appealed for $164 million to help fight cholera in the impoverished Caribbean country. So far, the water-borne disease has claimed 1,186 lives, according to Haiti's health ministry. Almost 50,000 people have sought medical help; about 40 percent of those people have been hospitalized.
"Critical supplies and skills are urgently needed," Nigel Fisher, the world body's humanitarian coordinator in Haiti, said in a press release Saturday. "We need doctors, nurses, water purification systems, chlorine tablets, soap, oral rehydration salts, tents for cholera treatment centres and a range of other supplies".
Fisher said the lackluster response is especially troubling, given that "cholera is an extremely simple disease to cure." The disease can be deadly absent timely medical attention.
Haiti's first case of cholera was confirmed in late October and quickly became an outbreak that spread to eight of the nation's 10 departments, or provinces. Some angry Haitians blamed their latest misery on the very people charged with keeping the peace: the United Nations.
They have accused Nepalese soldiers serving as U.N. peacekeepers of bringing the bacteria from their homeland. U.N. and Nepalese officials have repeatedly denied the charge, even suggesting that the assertions were politically motivated ahead of Haiti's presidential elections.
CNN
