HAITI has desperately sought to halt a cholera epidemic that threatens to spiral out of control after reaching the capital’s crowded slums, where 73 cases and one death have so far been recorded.

A cholera outbreak that already has left 250 people dead and more than 3,000 sickened is at the doorstep of an enormous potential breeding ground: the squalid camps in Port-au-Prince where 1.3 million Haiti earthquake survivors live.

AT LEAST 142 people have died in a cholera outbreak, and aid groups were rushing in medicine and other supplies yesterday to combat Haiti’s deadliest health problem since its devastating earthquake.

An outbreak of severe diarrhoea has killed at least 135 people in rural central Haiti and sickened hundreds more who overwhelmed a crowded hospital seeking treatment.