Health

Santo Domingo –  Twenty-three new cases of cholera have been registered in the Dominican Republic, raising the number of cases of the disease in the Caribbean nation to 105, health officials said.

Eleven of the people affected by the disease are being treated at hospitals, Public Health Minister Bautista Rojas told the Listin Diario newspaper.

No fatalities have been confirmed from the disease, but health officials are investigating the death in the southern part of the country of a farmer who exhibited cholera symptoms, Rojas said.

An "important number" of cases have been registered in the past few days in the southern province of San Juan de la Maguana, where the construction of latrines has been ordered to keep human waste out of the San Juan River, Rojas said.

The Artibonite River, which divides the country from neighboring Haiti, San Juan River and the basin of the Yaque del Sur River, the Dominican Republic's second-longest river, are all being monitored by the Public Health Ministry.

President Leonel Fernandez plans to take part Tuesday in a ceremony to welcome 5,000 volunteers to the cholera prevention effort, Rojas said.

Prevention and monitoring efforts have been expanded across the country, focusing on the provinces reporting the most cholera cases.

Health officials have called on Dominicans to take measures to prevent the spread of the disease.

More than 2,500 people have died from cholera in neighboring Haiti, where over 90,000 other people have been infected.

Haiti is dealing with the cholera epidemic as it struggles to recover from the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people and left 1 million homeless.