Haiti health calamity warning over supplies

Doctors and aid workers were running dangerously low on supplies in Haiti last night, hampering efforts to treat 200,000 injured people following the earthquake.

As days turn to weeks, doctors struggling to keep up with demand in devastated hospitals and improvised clinics warned of a looming public health calamity as survivors with untreated injuries failed to get proper attention.

Poor sanitation can also kill as tens of thousands of Haitians are

living in squalid camps with limited water, the UN said.

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Medical teams also are seeing a change in the types of cases they are treating, the World Health Organisation said.

It revealed there were growing numbers of diarrhoea cases, as well as unconfirmed reports of a rise in measles and tetanus cases in resettlement camps.

"The health care system in Haiti has been terribly affected by the earthquake," said a Red Cross spokesman.

"Medical staff have been killed and injured, hospitals destroyed and stocks damaged and depleted."

The Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort reached its "care limit" after treating more than 3,000 people.