More than a million people are awaiting supplies of food and medicine in Haiti after it was ravaged last week by Hurricane Matthew.
Nine days after the hurricane struck southwestern Haiti as a Category 4 storm, the government and international aid organisations are stepping up assistance to those affected, although the precarious condition of roads in the hardest-hit areas is slowing down the process.
The latest provisional figures released by emergency management officials indicate that Matthew left 473 dead, 339 injured and 75 missing.
A total of 175,000 people also are homeless and living in 224 shelters.
But sources from aid organisations and local authorities said last Friday that the hurricane killed more than 800 people.
The United Nations predicted on Tuesday that the death toll would continue to rise but not reach 1,000.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says Matthew affected 2.1 million people, of whom 1.4 million, including 592,581 children, need humanitarian assistance.
It added that 750,000 people, including 315,000 children, will urgently require humanitarian aid over the next three months.
Food and water are needed for some 1.4 million people with an additional 60,000 people requiring urgent medical care.
The Haitian government and international aid groups are particularly concerned about a new cholera outbreak in the aftermath of the hurricane, which, according to the UN, has triggered the worst humanitarian crisis in the impoverished nation since the 2010 earthquake that killed some 300,000 people.
