The cholera epidemic currently raging through Haiti was inadvertently introduced to the country through faecal contamination of river water, a four-member panel appointed by the United Nations concluded in a report published on 4 May. The report pointed to probable leakage from latrines at a riverside United Nations peacekeepers' camp. However, it stopped short of directly accusing Nepalese soldiers in the camp, who are widely suspected of carrying in the strain (which matches cholera strains circulating in Nepal). The outbreak - the first in Haiti in nearly a century - had by mid-April killed almost 4,900 people and made 286,000 ill.
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