LES CAYES, Haiti — Haiti's death toll climbed Thursday as rescue crews began reaching remote corners cut off when Hurricane Matthew slammed into the country's southwest peninsula, the first Category 4 storm to hit Haiti in more than a half century.

Bodies started to appear as waters receded in some areas two days after 145 mph (235 kph) winds smashed concrete walls, flattened palm trees and tore roofs off homes, forcing thousands of Haitians to flee. At least 122 people died in Haiti, the headquarters of the Civil Protection Agency said Thursday night, and authorities expected the number to rise. Mayors and other local officials in marooned areas were reporting higher numbers. Overall, 128 confirmed deaths have been attributed to Matthew in the Caribbean.

Those killed in Haiti included a woman and her 6-year-old daughter who frantically abandoned their flimsy home and headed to a nearby church to seek shelter as Matthew surged in early Tuesday, said Ernst Ais, mayor of the town of Cavaillon.

"On the way to the church, the wind took them," Ais told The Associated Press.

Officials were especially concerned about the department of Grand-Anse on the northern tip of the peninsula, where 38 of the known deaths were reported, the highest toll for any area.

"Devastation is everywhere," said Pilus Enor, mayor of the town of Camp Perrin. "Every house has lost its roof. All the plantations have been destroyed. ...This is the first time we see something like this."

In the nearby seaport of Les Cayes, many people searched for clean water as they lugged mattresses and other belongings they were able to salvage.

"Nothing is going well," said Jardine Laguerre, a teacher. "The water took what little money we had. We are hungry."

Authorities and aid workers were just beginning to get a clear picture of what they fear is the country's biggest disaster in years.

Officials with the Pan American Health Organization warned Thursday about a possible surge in cholera cases because of the widespread flooding caused by Matthew. Haiti's cholera outbreak has killed roughly 10,000 people and sickened more than 800,000 since 2010, when it was introduced into the country's biggest river from a U.N. base where Nepalese peacekeepers were deployed.

Before hitting Haiti, the storm was blamed for four deaths in the Dominican Republic, one in Colombia and one in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

In the coming days, U.S. military personnel equipped with nine helicopters were expected to help deliver food and water to hard-hit areas.

While recovery efforts continued in Haiti, Matthew pummeled the Bahamas on Thursday. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the capital of Nassau, but the storm ripped off roofs, uprooted trees and caused flooding that trapped some people in their homes. Authorities urged people to stay indoors while they conducted search and rescue operations.

"This is the most intense hurricane I have ever been through," a Nassau resident, 43-year-old Jose Ageeb, said in a message to the AP. "And I have been through many." </s> Hurricane Matthew: Haiti death toll hits 1,000 as victims are buried in mass graves

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As the death toll from Hurricane Matthew in Haiti rises to 1,000 and cholera spreads in the devastated south-west, the nation has started to bury its dead in mass graves, an official says.

The powerful hurricane, the fiercest Caribbean storm in nearly a decade, slammed into Haiti on Tuesday (local time), bringing 233 kilometre-per-hour winds and torrential rains.

Numbers from local officials showed 1,000 people were killed by the storm in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas.

The official death toll from the central civil protection agency is 336, a slower count because officials must visit each village to confirm the numbers.

Authorities had to start burying the dead in mass graves in Jeremie as the bodies were starting to decompose, said Kedner Frenel, the most senior central government official in the Grand'Anse region on Haiti's western peninsula.

Mr Frenel said 522 people died in Grand'Anse alone.

A tally of death reported by mayors from 15 of 18 municipalities in Sud Department on the south side of the peninsula showed 386 people there.

In the rest of the country, 92 people died, the same tally showed.

Mr Frenel said there was great concern about the cholera spreading, and that authorities were focused on getting water, food and medication to the thousands of people living in shelters.

Cholera causes severe diarrhea and can kill within hours if untreated. It is spread through contaminated water and has a short incubation period, which leads to rapid outbreaks.

Government teams fanned out across the hard-hit southwestern tip of the country over the weekend to repair treatment centres and reach the epicentre of one outbreak.

Survivors persevere

Despite the loss, survivors packed what remained of the city's churches on Sunday, many seated in pews under open sky because Matthew ripped away roofs and even walls of the sanctuaries.

At least one was so badly damaged that worshippers set up an altar and prayed outside.

Jameson Pierre, 22, saw at least one bright side of the devastation.

"There will be lots and lots of jobs since so many homes were knocked down. I've been working for the last three days straight," he said.

The first three of five cargo planes of humanitarian aid from the United States have arrived at the airport in the capital Port of Prince.

They were carrying 480 metric tons of relief supplies, including 20,000 hygiene kits, 18,000 sets of kitchen utensils for cooking, 40,000 blankets and 500 rolls of plastic sheeting.

AP/Reuters

Topics: storm-disaster, poverty, weather, cyclone, disasters-and-accidents, cyclones, haiti </s> Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) Haiti's leader says Hurricane Matthew's assault has accelerated the already existing cholera epidemic and undermined the strides made in fighting the disease.

"A lot of effort has been made to avoid the spread of this epidemic," said Interim President Jocelerme Privert, "but the hurricane has accelerated it."

Thirteen people have died from cholera since Matthew hit Haiti, he said. This tragedy -- which has killed more than 370 people -- comes after a devastating cholera outbreak in 2010 . The United Nations says it has been involved in trying to eradicate the disease in Haiti.

Haiti has one of the highest rates of cholera in the world, with almost 10,000 people dead from the disease since 2010 and more than 27,000 suspected cases have been reported this year -- an estimated 1 in 3 of them children, UNICEF said.

Before the hurricane, only 1 in 3 people in Haiti had access to proper latrines and less than 3 in 5 had access to safe water. In rural areas, these rates go down to 1 in 4 for sanitation and 1 in 2 for water. Diarrhea is one of the main killers of children under 5 in the country, UNICEF said.

The uptick in cholera cases, confirmed and suspected, has been most apparent in the departments of Sud and Grand-Anse, according to Stephane De Rengerves, senior executive liaison officer with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. There are 10 departments, or regional administrative units, in Haiti.

Rene Domersant, Health Ministry representative at Haiti's National Emergency Center, told CNN there are currently 128 confirmed cases of cholera and at least 160 suspected cases for Sud, Nipps and Grand'Anse departments in the south of the country.

All patients, with either confirmed or suspected cases for cholera, are under observation and receiving medical care.

In one hospital in Jeremie, which is in Grand-Anse, there are at least 40 suspected cases of cholera since Hurricane Matthew hit. The Saint Antoine Hospital received hundreds of patients over the weekend, most of them suffering injuries from flying debris rather than cholera.

Officials said they are out of anesthetics and antibiotics, and haven't gotten any aid, despite the massive damage the Hurricane caused the facility, and aid in the area.

"Quick decisions and strong leadership can make or break relief operations. Right now, 1 million people need urgent humanitarian assistance. Lifesaving measures such as medical aid, clean water and appropriate information should remain the priority at this stage." said Dr. Unni Krishnan, director of Save the Children's Emergency Health Unit in Haiti on Monday in a press release.

"Flooding and contaminated water caused by the storm pose a huge threat to survivors including thousands of children. Clean water and medicine delivered to the hardest hit areas in the next 24 to 48 hours is a key priority."

'Frightening to see from the air'

Vince DeGennaro, a Port-au-Prince-based doctor who is the medical director for the country's only medical emergency helicopter program, has been flying medical relief flights since Thursday into towns along Haiti's devastated southwest coast in the aftermath of the storm.

DeGennaro, who has lived and worked in Haiti since 2012, is medical director of the Haiti Air Ambulance and president of Innovating Health International, a nonprofit that is "dedicated to treating chronic disease and dealing with women's health issues in developing countries."

On Sunday, he flew into the town of Roche-a-Bateau, where he said 90% of the buildings had been destroyed by the storm, including the concrete school and church buildings, leaving the residents with no shelter.

"People are just sleeping outside and that leads to all sorts of problems with disease," he said.

In those conditions, he said, the threat of a cholera outbreak was a "huge concern."

DeGennaro said there had been dozens of cholera deaths in the southwestern town of Port-a-Piment.

"For cholera, every one person who has it tends to infect two or three people, so it's frightening," he said.

Matthew wreaked havoc as it made landfall in Haiti on Tuesday, killing hundreds, displacing thousands, destroying homes and knocking out electricity, water supply and communications in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

While international aid workers on the ground say this is the worst disaster to hit Haiti since the 2010 earthquake, it is still unclear how many people may have been killed by the Category 4 storm.

Haiti's official death toll has risen to 372, according to the country's Civil Protection Agency. However, given the strict verification process for victims, the actual numbers are likely much higher. A person is only counted as dead when their identity has been verified by the National Identification Office.

The hardest hit of Haiti's 10 regional departments, Grand-Anse, has reported even more dead than the official national toll. UNICEF said Monday that 475 people had been killed in Grand-Anse, citing local emergency operations authorities who have been tallying the dead from different cities.

DeGennaro said the mayor of Roche-a-Bateau told him that 90 people had been killed in the town alone. DeGennaro said he expected the final death toll to number in the thousands.

More than 1.4 million people are in need of urgent assistance, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien said Monday.

"The widespread devastation, flooding, displacement and crop loss hit at a time when Haitians were already challenged by an increase in cholera cases and severe food insecurity and malnutrition," said O'Brien.

"In the worst-hit departments many towns have been virtually wiped out," he said. "Families that were fortunate to survive the hurricane now find themselves in a struggle to survive, with thousands of homes and livelihoods washed away by the storm."

Still waiting for help

In Les Cayes, a port city in one of the worst-hit areas, residents told CNN they had yet to receive any government help in their efforts to recover from the disaster.

"I saw the water rising up to my waist. Tin roofs flying everywhere. Then a wall came down behind me," said resident Angelo Joseph as he showed the wreckage of his destroyed home to CNN.

Holly Frew, an emergency communications officer at the disaster relief organization CARE, said the damage in the city was "hard to believe, even as I see it with my own eyes."

"Matthew has uprooted massive trees and plunged them into buildings. Homes are utterly destroyed. And downed power lines litter the streets," she said.

"There are a few glimpses of life as it was -- some markets have re-opened -- but the people here have such a long road ahead."

With roads and bridges washed out, the towns in the southwest have been inaccessible by road for days, and many remained out of reach except by air, said DeGennaro.

"The first challenge has been access to some of these remote communities. We still can't reach some of the most affected areas by car," Marc Vincent, UNICEF's head of mission in Haiti, told CNN.

On the ground, medical staff were finding many patients with soft tissue injuries, lacerations and broken bones from flying debris, said DeGennaro.

Six days after the storm, the wounds were starting to develop serious infections, adding tetanus to the list of medical concerns, he said.

The priority was getting food, water and shelter to affected populations, to try to prevent outbreaks of disease compounding Haiti's misery, he said.

"I expect the cholera to increase and other illnesses related to dehydration in the short term, and malnutrition in the medium term," he said.

On the banks of the River Grande D'Anse, Angela Joseph was one of several women trying to scrub their clothes clean.

During the hurricane, a storm surge swept through the plains and pasture lands on the edge of Jeremie, carrying enormous trees and flipping vehicles and trucks. Joseph's chickens and goats were all killed, and now she has no food for herself and her three children.

Because of the cholera danger, people were cautioned not to drink river water. Women said they've had to buy small plastic bags of water for drinking when they can afford it.

"I haven't eaten all day," Joseph said, as she scrubbed clothes in a plastic bin. </s> Haiti started burying some of its dead in mass graves in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, a government official said on Sunday, as cholera spread in the devastated southwest and the death toll from the storm rose to 1,000 people.

The powerful hurricane, the fiercest Caribbean storm in nearly a decade, slammed into Haiti on Tuesday, whipping it with 145 mph (233 kph) winds and torrential rains.

A Reuters tally of numbers from local officials showed that 1,000 people were killed by the storm in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas.

The official death toll from the central civil protection agency is 336, a slower count because officials must visit each village to confirm the numbers.

Authorities had to start burying the dead in mass graves in Jeremie as the bodies were starting to decompose, Kedner Frenel, the most senior central government official in the Grand’Anse region on Haiti’s western peninsula.

Frenel said 522 people died in Grand’Anse alone. A tally of death reported by mayors from 15 of 18 municipalities in Sud Department on the south side of the peninsula showed 386 people there. In the rest of the country, 92 people died, the same tally showed.

Frenel said there was great concern about the cholera spreading, and that authorities were focused on getting water, food and medication to the thousands of people living in shelters.

Cholera causes severe diarrhea and can kill within hours if untreated. It is spread through contaminated water and has a short incubation period, which leads to rapid outbreaks.

Government teams fanned out across the hard-hit southwestern tip of the country over the weekend to repair treatment centers and reach the epicenter of one outbreak.

A small airstrip at the edge of town meanwhile hums with activity. Aid convoys are arriving from the capital, now that some roads washed out by Hurricane Matthew have been cleared. A barge carrying food and water is moored offshore.

An international response is finally getting underway as Haitian authorities try to gauge the full extent of the staggering blow delivered by Hurricane Matthew, including hundreds dead and tens of thousands of homes obliterated.

The precise death toll remained uncertain Sunday. Guillaume Silvera, a senior official with the Civil Protection Agency in the storm-blasted Grand-Anse Department, which includes Jeremie, said at least 522 deaths were confirmed there alone — not including people in several remote communities still cut off by collapsed roads and bridges.

National Civil Protection headquarters in Port-au-Prince, meanwhile, said Saturday its official count for the whole country was 336, which included 191 deaths in Grand-Anse.

Haiti began three days of formal national mourning on Sunday under a decree issued by President Jocelerme Privert, even as aid began to move toward flattened communities.

“It’s beginning to pick up now,” said Stephane Rolland, a regional coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross, as workers unloaded blankets, soap, bleach and other critical items in Jeremie on Saturday.

The first two cargo planes of humanitarian aid from the United States arrived on Saturday at the Toussaint Louverture airport in the capital Port of Prince. U.S. Ambassador Peter Mulrean said that three other planes are expected to arrive in the next few days with a total amount of 480 metric tons of humanitarian supplies.

There are clearly limits, though, including the fact that the airstrip in Jeremie is unable to accommodate large cargo planes, and only operates in the daytime.

Many of the villages in the southwestern peninsula are difficult to reach. And people are growing increasingly desperate after losing everything when the storm ripped through the area on Tuesday.

Dony St. Germain, an official with El Shaddai Ministries International, said young men in villages off the road between the southern city of Les Cayes and Jeremie were starting to put up blockades of rocks and broken branches to halt the convoys.

“They are seeing these convoys coming through with supplies and they aren’t stopping. They are hungry and thirsty and some are getting angry,” said St. Germain.

Government officials estimate that at least 350,000 people need assistance, and concern was growing over an increase in cholera cases following widespread flooding unleashed by Matthew. An ongoing cholera outbreak has already killed roughly 10,000 people and sickened more than 800,000 since 2010, when the infectious disease was introduced into the country’s biggest river from a U.N. base where Nepalese peacekeepers were deployed.

Maria Sofia Sanon, a health worker overseeing the open-air cholera treatment center in a corner of Jeremie’s main hospital, said they were ill-equipped to deal with patients. The area was strewn with broken tree branches, and a group of young mothers sat outside holding up the arms of their glassy-eyed children being rehydrated via IVs.

“They’re not supposed to be in the sun, but we have no more beds,” Sanon said.

The World Food Program says there has been massive destruction of crops. Hospitals and clinics have been damaged or destroyed as they struggle to deal with an increase in patients with injuries sustained during the storm as well as an apparent increase in cholera. UNICEF said that in Grand Anse alone there were 66,000 houses destroyed and 20,000 heavily damaged.

“Information gathered from various sources in the field suggests that the human toll (dead and injured) will be heavier than the current official figures,” the agency said in a report.

Jocelyne Saint Preux was part of the crowd that lined up in an orderly fashion to get food as aid began to arrive, including shipments of food and other emergency supplies from the U.S. Agency for International Development carried by waves of military transport helicopters.

The mother of three children whose home was destroyed said officials were handing out wheat, beans, oil and salt.

“Yes, they brought food, but it’s not sufficient,” she said. “There’s no water. There’s no charcoal.”

As aid trickled into Jeremie, Jislene Jean-Baptiste surveyed what remained of the one-room house that the grandmother shares with her three daughters and their children. There wasn’t much left. Storm surge flowed across the road and drenched her belongings in waist-deep salt water, washing away the stores of rice and sugar she regularly sold at the market to support her family. Then the wind tore off her roof.

“That storm was the most terrifying thing that ever happened here,” she said.

Haiti faces a growing cholera outbreak that threatens to turn its disaster even more deadly.

In Port Salut, a smashed-up town on Haiti’s southern peninsula that was among those that bore the brunt of Hurricane Matthew, fears are rising.

The town’s sole hospital on Sunday recorded its first death from the disease, a man of undisclosed age.

Another nine patients brought in within the past two days are being treated for the illness, which is caught from contaminated water.

Other cholera deaths have been reported in different parts of southern Haiti.

The outbreak is especially alarming for this destitute tropical nation. In the wake of a catastrophic earthquake in 2010, cholera was inadvertently introduced by U.N. peacekeepers and went on to kill around 10,000 people.

Civil defense officials have put the death toll from the hurricane itself at 336, although some officials said it topped 400.

Dr. Stevenson Desravines, the director of the Port Salut hospital, told AFP that cholera was rapidly becoming a “fatal danger” for the town and surrounding area.

“It’s something that is starting,” he said, adding that his facility lacked personnel, medicine and equipment to tackle that and other health problems.

“Since the storm, we are receiving around 100 patients a day, with 85 percent from storm-related injuries,” mainly broken bones, bleeding and concussions from falling trees, roofs and other objects, he said.

The remainder had other, regular illnesses such as asthma and high blood pressure.

Before the cholera death, the hospital had registered three patients deceased from their injuries sustained last Tuesday when the storm struck with tremendous fury.

The hospital, standing intact on a street of destroyed and damaged houses and fallen trees, has a staff of 55 — a third of them Cuban, who are operating under a years-old cooperation agreement.

One of the Cuban personnel, who declined to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to speak to media, said storm-related injuries were currently the health priority for his team.

There were very few cholera cases right now, relatively, he said.

But after he spoke the cholera death occurred in the hospital, galvanizing staff and focusing attention on the new threat.

AFP journalists saw the covered body of the deceased patient in a hospital room, and Desravines confirmed the death was from the disease.

Outside, sheltering in the shade from the bright sun, another cholera-afflicted patient, a weak-looking woman, received fluid intravenously.

Inside and outside the hospital, used soda bottles filled with diluted chlorine hung from handrails, encouraging staff, patients and visitors to regularly disinfect their hands to avoid catching the disease.

A sign pointed those with suspected cholera to use a separate entrance.

Desravines said that so far he had received no help from the United Nations or other aid organizations in the country.

“We are waiting for more personnel, more supplies, including intravenous bags, medicines and cleaning products,” he said. </s> Two girls play amid the rubble after Hurricane Matthew in a street of Port-a-Piment, Haiti, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haiti started burying some of its dead in mass graves in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, a government official said on Sunday, as cholera spread in the devastated southwest and the death toll from the storm rose to 1,000 people.

The powerful hurricane, the fiercest Caribbean storm in nearly a decade, slammed into Haiti on Tuesday with 145 mile-per-hour (233 kph) winds and torrential rains that left 1.4 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

A Reuters tally of numbers from local officials showed that 1,000 people were killed by the storm in Haiti, which has a population of about 10 million and is the poorest country in the Americas.

The official death toll from the central civil protection agency is 336, a slower count because officials must visit each village to confirm the numbers.

Authorities had to start burying the dead in mass graves in Jeremie because the bodies were starting to decompose, said Kedner Frenel, the most senior central government official in the Grand'Anse region on Haiti's western peninsula.

Frenel said 522 people were killed in Grand'Anse alone. A tally of deaths reported by mayors from 15 of 18 municipalities in Sud Department on the south side of the peninsula showed 386 people there. In the rest of the country, 92 people were killed, the same tally showed.

Frenel said there was great concern about cholera spreading, and that authorities were focused on getting water, food and medication to the thousands of people living in shelters.

Cholera causes severe diarrhea and can kill within hours if untreated. It is spread through contaminated water and has a short incubation period, which leads to rapid outbreaks.

Government teams fanned out across the hard-hit southwestern tip of the country over the weekend to repair treatment centers and reach the epicenter of one outbreak. </s> A flyover of Haiti by the U.S. Coast Guard shows the devastation left in Matthew's path.

Overnight, the death toll rose to at least 140 people killed by the storm, and officials say many more are still missing.

The brunt of the storm hit the southwestern Tiburon Peninsula, where most of the fatalities were reported.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, is considered highly vulnerable to natural disasters.

Food and wanter is scarce, and hospitals are short on resources.

Health officials fear there may be an upsurge in cholera from water contamination after Matthew.

With the country's long-delayed presidential election postponed because of the hurricane, the road to building back may have only just begun. </s> (CNN) Haitians in the areas worst hit by Hurricane Matthew are desperately awaiting assistance six days after the storm, as concerns grow about potential cholera outbreaks.

Vince DeGennaro, a Port-au-Prince-based doctor who's the medical director for the country's only medical emergency helicopter program, has been flying medical relief flights into towns along Haiti's devastated southwest coast in the aftermath of the storm.

"These towns on the southwestern coast, it's near total destruction. Just about every building was knocked down, even concrete ones," he said. "It's quite frightening to see from the air ."

Towns along Haiti's southwestern coast were devastated by the hurricane.

On Sunday, he flew into the town of Roche-a-Bateau, where he said 90% of the buildings had been destroyed by the storm, including the concrete school and church buildings, leaving the residents with no shelter.

"People are just sleeping outside and that leads to all sorts of problems with disease," he told CNN.

In those conditions, he said, the threat of a cholera outbreak was a "huge concern."

The disease, which is spread through water or food contaminated Vibrio cholerae bacteria, can cause severe diarrhea and vomiting, which leads to extreme dehydration. It can swiftly result in outbreaks, and patients who are not treated quickly can die within hours.

Cholera cases have been reported in Randel, in southwestern Haiti, UNICEF reported in a situation update Monday, while DeGennaro said there had been dozens of cholera deaths in the southwestern town of Port-a-Piment.

"For cholera, every one person who has it tends to infect two or three people, so it's frightening," he said.

A cholera epidemic killed at least 10,000 people in Haiti when it was accidentally introduced by UN peacekeepers following the 2010 earthquake.

Matthew wreaked havoc as it made landfall in Haiti on Tuesday, killing hundreds, displacing thousands, destroying homes and knocking out electricity, water supply and communications in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

While international aid workers on the ground say this is the worst disaster to hit Haiti since the 2010 earthquake, it is still unclear how many people may have been killed by the Category 4 storm.

Haiti's official death toll has risen to 372, according to the country's Civil Protection Agency. However, given the strict verification process for victims, the actual numbers are likely much higher. A person is only counted as dead when their identities have been verified by the National Identification Office.

The hardest hit of Haiti's 10 regional departments, Grand-Anse, has reported even more dead than the official national toll. UNICEF said Monday that 475 people had been killed in Grand-Anse, citing local emergency operations authorities who have been tallying the dead from different cities.

DeGennaro said the mayor of Roche-a-Bateau told him that 90 people had been killed in the town alone. DeGennaro said he expected the final death toll to number in the thousands.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates 1.3 million people are living in the hardest hit areas, with 750,000 in need of immediate humanitarian assistance.

Still waiting for help

In Les Cayes, a port city in one of the worst-hit areas, residents told CNN they had yet to receive any government help in their efforts to recover from the disaster.

"I saw the water rising up to my waist. Tin roofs flying everywhere. Then a wall came down behind me," said resident Angelo Joseph as he showed the wreckage of his destroyed home to CNN.

Holly Frew, an emergency communications officer at the disaster relief organization CARE, said the damage in the city was "hard to believe, even as I see it with my own eyes."

"Matthew has uprooted massive trees and plunged them into buildings. Homes are utterly destroyed. And downed power lines litter the streets," she said.

"There are a few glimpses of life as it was -- some markets have re-opened -- but the people here have such a long road ahead."

With roads and bridges washed out, the towns in the southwest have been inaccessible by road for days, and many remained out of reach except by air, said DeGennaro.

"The first challenge has been access to some of these remote communities. We still can't reach some of the most affected areas by car," Marc Vincent, UNICEF's head of mission in Haiti, told CNN.

On the ground, medical staff were finding many patients with soft tissue injuries, lacerations and broken bones from flying debris, said DeGennaro.

Six days after the storm, the wounds were starting to develop serious infections, adding tetanus to the list of medical concerns, he said.

The priority was getting food, water and shelter to affected populations, to try to prevent outbreaks of disease compounding Haiti's misery, he said.

"I expect the cholera to increase and other illnesses related to dehydration in the short term, and malnutrition in the medium term," he said. </s> "The death toll is rising on an hourly basis as aid workers and authorities get into these really hard-hit regions where not only communication and power were knocked out, but the roads were knocked out, so there has really been no way in," CNN International Correspondent Shasta Darlington reported from Port-au-Prince on Saturday morning.

"Four people are missing, 211 are injured and more than 60,000 people are now displaced from the killer storm," he said.

"We do not know the exact number; we cannot find all the people," Haitian senator Herve Fourcand, told CNN on Saturday.

Other media outlets report much higher deaths. A count by Reuters, based on information from local civil protection officials, put the death toll well over 800. "It's only now that we're beginning to really understand the extent of the devastation," Darlington said. A man stands in the remnants of a house destroyed by Hurricane Matthew in the southern town of Les Cayes on Monday, October 10. Matthew wreaked havoc in Haiti, killing hundreds, destroying homes and knocking out electricity in the impoverished Caribbean nation. More than 1.4 million people are in need of urgent assistance, a UN official says. Two young men who lost their homes awake from a tent in the courtyard of a school where they took shelter in Port Salut on October 10. A woman sits in debris where her house once stood in Les Cayes on October 10. A group works to clear debris from the streets in Les Anglais on October 10. A man uses salvaged material to build a makeshift roof for his damaged house in Port-a-Piment on October 10. People sick with cholera receive medical assistance at a hospital in Jeremie on October 10. The destruction from Matthew has accelerated the cholera epidemic in Haiti and undermined strides made in fighting the waterborne disease, the country's leader says. People cross one of the many southern coastal rivers where bridges were knocked out or damaged near Port-a-Piment on October 10. People pass damaged buildings in a seaside fishing neighborhood of Port Salut on Sunday, October 9. People bathe and wash clothes in a river that runs through Roche-à-Bateaux on October 9. Concerns are rising in the storm's aftermath about cholera, caused by the ingestion of contaminated water or food. US soldiers unload bags of food from a helicopter in the hard-hit coastal city of Jeremie on October 9. Worshippers pray at a Jeremie church destroyed by Matthew on October 9. A cholera patient receives treatment at a state hospital in Jeremie on October 9. Family members react during the funeral of Roberto Laguerre, 32, on Saturday, October 8, in Jeremie. Laguerre was killed when the hurricane struck. Andrenne Joseph dries her clothes near the remains of her house in Jeremie on October 8. Residents of Jeremie wait on the shore October 8 as a boat with water and food from the "Mission of Hope" charity arrives. Jeremie appears to be the epicenter of Haiti's growing humanitarian crisis in the wake of the storm. Corn salvaged from destroyed crops dries in the sun Saturday after Hurricane Matthew swept through Jeremie. People unload food and water from a "Mission of Hope" charity boat Saturday after Hurricane Matthew swept through Jeremie. An aerial view of damage to the small village of Casanette near Baumond, Haiti on Saturday. The full scale of the devastation in rural Haiti is becoming clear in the days after Hurricane Matthew leveled huge swaths of the country's south. Haitians gather along a flooded street in Haiti on Friday, October 7. Palm trees lie flattened on the ground after high winds knocked them over. Rubble lies in the street in the aftermath of the storm. Residents carry a coffin containing the remains of a pregnant woman, a victim of Hurricane Matthew, in Jeremie on Friday, October 7. People across southwest Haiti were digging through the wreckage of their homes Friday, salvaging what they could of their meager possessions. An aerial view shows destruction caused by Hurricane Matthew in Jeremie, Haiti, on Friday, October 7. The damage from Hurricane Matthew was especially brutal in southern Haiti, where sustained winds of 130 mph punished the country. Damaged homes are shown on Friday, October 7, in Haiti, where the death toll is in the hundreds. A young man stands near the cathedral damaged by Hurricane Matthew, in Jeremie, Haiti, on October 7. A man dries toys recovered from the debris left by Hurricane Matthew in Les Cayes, Haiti, on Thursday, October 6. A girl washes mud from her feet after Hurricane Matthew passed through Les Cayes, Haiti, on October 6. Fallen trees litter the ground outside a damaged church in Les Cayes on October 6. Hundreds of people have been killed in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, officials said, with the death toll expected to rise. Girls wade through a flooded street in Les Cayes on October 6. Two days after the storm, authorities and aid workers in Haiti still lack a clear picture of what they fear is the country's biggest disaster in years. Saint Anne Church in Les Cayes is reduced to ruins. In the wake of the storm, the Electoral Commission postponed the country's presidential election, which had been scheduled for Sunday. Men push a motorbike through a flooded street in Leogane on October 5. More than 300,000 people are in shelters across the country, the United Nations said.

 A man carries a woman across a river at Petit Goave on October 5. A bridge collapsed because of the storm. A woman cleans her flooded home following the overflowing of La Rouyonne River on October 5 in Leogane. Residents could face risks from standing water. Haiti is still recovering from a cholera outbreak after the devastating 2010 earthquake. Nice Simon, the mayor of Tabarre, holds a baby on October 3, as she helps evacuate the area along a river. Matthew struck the southwestern peninsula with winds of 125 mph (200 kph) and heavy rains that flattened homes, flooded villages, razed crops, swept away cattle and cut off the parts of the island. The U.S. State Department warned citizen travelers of "serious problems concerning emergency response/medical care infrastructure and crime in Haiti," in a statement released Friday. Worse still, there are warnings the aftermath could worsen the nation's cholera epidemic , which killed at least 10,000 people after the 2010 earthquake. "Cholera is the biggest problem right now," Fourcand said. "We need clean water. The water here is so dirty." An estimated 500,000 children live in the areas in the southern region most affected by Hurricane Matthew, UNICEF said in a statement. Agency representative Marc Vincent, who is in Haiti, said they are "still far from having a full picture of the extent of the damage" and "are hoping for the best, but bracing for the worst." UN officials said the hurricane is the country's worst humanitarian crisis since the devastating 2010 earthquake. "The focus right now is getting aid to these people who were affected. So they have to get in clean water, they have to get in food and shelter," Darlington said. </s> Less than a week since Hurricane Matthew slammed into Haiti, killing at least 1,000 people according to a tally of numbers from local officials, devastated corners of the country are facing a public health crisis as cholera gallops through rural communities lacking clean water, food and shelter.

Reuters visited the Port-a-Piment hospital early on Sunday morning, the first day southwestern Haiti's main coastal road had become semi-navigable by car.

At that time, there were 39 cases of cholera, according to Missole Antoine, the hospital's medical director. By the early afternoon, there were nearly 60, and four people had died of the waterborne illness.

"That number is going to rise," said Antoine, as she rushed between patients laid out on the hospital floor.

Although there were 13 cases of cholera before Matthew hit, Antoine said the cases had risen drastically since the hurricane cut off the desperately poor region.

The hospital lacks an ambulance, or even a car, and Antoine said many new patients were coming from miles away, carried by family members on camp beds.

Inside the hospital, grim-faced parents cradled young children whose eyes had sunk back and were unable to prop up their own heads.

"I believe in the doctors, and also in God," said 37-year-old Roosevelt Dume, holding the head of his son, Roodly, as he tried to remain upbeat.

Out on the streets, the scene was also shocking. For miles on end, almost all the houses were reduced to little more than rubble and twisted metal. Colorful clothes were littered among the chaos.

The region's banana crop was destroyed with vast fields of plantain flattened into a leafy mush. With neither government or foreign aid arriving quickly, people relied on felled coconuts for food and water.

The stench of death, be it human or animal, was everywhere.

In the village of Labei, near Port-a-Piment, locals said the river had washed down cadavers from villages upstream. With nobody coming to move the corpses, residents used planks of driftwood to push them down the river and into the sea.

Down by the shore, the corpse of one man lay blistering in the sun. A few hundred meters to his left in a roadside gully, three dead goats stewed in the toxic slime.

"It seems to me like a nuclear bomb went off," said Paul Edouarzin, a United Nations Environmental Program employee based near Port-a-Piment.

"In terms of destruction - environmental and agricultural - I can tell you 2016 is worse than 2010," he added, referring to the devastating 2010 earthquake from which Haiti has yet to recover.

Diarrhea-stricken residents in the village of Chevalier were well aware of the nearby cholera outbreak, but had little option except to drink the brackish water from the local well that they believed was already contaminated by dead livestock.

"We have been abandoned by a government that never thinks of us," said Marie-Ange Henry, as she surveyed her smashed home.

She said Chevalier had yet to receive any aid and many, like her, were coming down with fever. Cholera, she feared, was on its way.

Pierre Moise Mongerard, a pastor, was banking on divine assistance to rescue his roofless church in the village of Torbeck. In his Sunday best - a sports coat, chinos and brown leather shoes - he joined a small choir in songs that echoed out into the surrounding rice fields.

"We hope that God gives us the possibility to rebuild the Church and help the victims here in this area," he said, before the music seized him, and he slowly joined in the chant, closing his eyes and turning his palms up toward the sky.
Matthew's death toll in Haiti rises to at least one thousand, with victims being buried in mass graves. An unknown number of people remain missing and authorities report that cholera is spreading in the hardest hit-areas in the country's southwest.