VietNamNet Bridge - More than 130 people have died in a recent diarrhea outbreak in Haiti, health authorities there said Thursday.

According to information reaching here from Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, authorities said that the deaths were registered in rural areas in different parts of the country.

The cause of the outbreak has not been confirmed yet, but a health ministry official told press that "the first results from the lab tests show that there is cholera, but we do not know which type."

In Artibonite in northern Haiti, 30 victims have died and at least 150 more were hospitalized. In Mirebalais, northeast of the capital, there were 10 deaths and 60 more undergoing treatment.

"There are several hundred people in hospital, and we are evacuating a number of the sick patients to other centers," said Gabriel Timothe, director general of Haiti's Health Ministry.

Authorities have asked local residents to take sanitary measures to stop the spread of the disease.

For months, international aid organizations have warned that any outbreak of disease in Haiti could spread rapidly due to poor sanitary conditions in the camps where people have little access to clean water.

Haiti has been hit by severe flooding recently, which compounded the misery caused by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake in January that killed about 250,000 people.

Source: Xinhua