Haiti - Death toll jumps to 917 as international organisations appeal for funds to fight epidemic.

The death toll from Haiti's cholera outbreak has soared to 917 as officials struggle to contain the growing epidemic threatening the quake-ravaged country.

The previous official toll announced two days earlier was 796.

Authorities on Sunday said 14,642 people had been treated in hospitals since the disease took hold in the desperately poor Caribbean nation.

Officials fear the scale of the epidemic could increase exponentially if cholera infiltrates makeshift camps in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, where hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors live in cramped and unsanitary conditions.

A January earthquake flattened much of the capital, leaving more than 250,000 people dead and an estimated 1.3 million of Haiti's 10 million population displaced.

UN appeal

International organisations have stepped up appeals for funds to bring in more doctors, medicine and water purification equipment.

The United Nations is asking for $164m to fight the epidemic, which has gained strength over the past week.

"We hope we can get this, otherwise all our efforts will be over-run by the epidemic," Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in Geneva on Friday.

The outbreak, the first in Haiti in more than a century, was  confirmed on October 22 in northern Haiti where the Artibonite River  is believed to the conduit of the disease.

Since then, thousands of people have been sickened, swamping tiny, overwhelmed and ill-prepared hospitals and clinics, according to the health ministry.

originally published in AL Jazeera