Haiti death toll 'same as tsunami'

10 Feb 2010, 10:16 am   -   Source: SBS/AP/AFP
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Authorities say those who were buried in private funerals are not included in the official death toll (AFP)

Authorities say those who were buried in private funerals are not included in the official death toll (AFP)

Haitian authorities say 230,000 people died in the country's deadly quake - putting the disaster on a par with the 2004 Asian tsunami.

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Haitian authorities say 230,000 people died in the country's deadly quake - putting the disaster on a par with the 2004 Asian tsunami.

The government initially estimated 150,000 people had been killed on January 24, apparently from bodies being recovered in the rubble of collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince.

But it now says that toll has risen sharply - and could leap again, with more bodies remaining uncounted as the country struggles to cope with the aftermath of the earthquake.

Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said the new figure was not definitive, as it does not include bodies buried by private funeral homes in private cemeteries or those who died and were buried by their own families.

On Tuesday, rescuers pulled a man alive from the rubble, almost a month after the quake struck, reducing massive sections of the Haitian capital to ruins.

Evans Monsigrace, 28, is thought to have survived under a collapsed building for 27 days.

"It's amazing and we are proud to have him here," said doctor Dushyantha Jayaweera, chief medical officer at the University of Miami field hospital in Port-au-Prince.

"Today he is alert, oriented," he said, "his prognosis is very good."

It was not immediately possible to verify Monsigrace's claim and there was no concrete explanation of how he survived so long.
 

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