Cholera Hits Port-au-Prince; Toll at 250

With the potential for an epidemic looming, Haitian officials reported five cases of cholera in the capital Port-au-Prince today, reports the BBC, though they say the cases were caught early and isolated quickly. The news comes as the death toll in the outbreak topped 250 and Haiti's health chief said some 3,000 people were infected. Still, officials find cause for hope.

The five people in Port-au-Prince contracted cholera in the rural region where the outbreak is focused, so the UN says the capital is "not a new location of infection." "We have registered a diminishing in numbers of deaths and of hospitalised people in the most critical areas," says Haiti's health chief. "The tendency is that it is stabilizing, without being able to say that we have reached a peak." (More Cholera stories.)