Estimated death toll from Haiti’s earthquake rises to 230,000

The Haitian government has raised the estimated death toll from the January 12 earthquake to 230,000. That's about the same as from the 2004 Tsunami in Southeast Asia.

The UN says that sanitation is now a primary concern for the thousands of Haitians living in makeshift shelters. According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 1.2 million people are living in spontaneous settlements. Rural areas are also straining to deal with nearly half a million people who have fled Port Au Prince to smaller towns.

Speaking to reporters today, Dr. Greg Elder, medical director for Doctors Without Borders programs in Haiti, Somalia, Uganda, and Nigeria said that efforts were the single most concentrated response in memory from the organization.

"We have today something in the region of twelve-hundred or thirteen-hundred staff on the ground. We have three hundred–fifty international staff on the ground. Over the last three and half weeks, close to four weeks, we have flown in over thirty-four charters of cargo, over a thousand metric tons of freight half of it directly to Port Au Prince half of it to Santo Domingo. We have back bases set up in Santo Domingo, back bases in Port Au Prince and some support bases in Miami. In terms of medical facilities, we now have sixteen projects - most of them concentrated in Port Au Prince."