Weather conditions — not UN soldiers — may have triggered Haiti’s cholera epidemic, which has killed more than 1,000 people in less than a month, three leading researchers have told SciDev.Net.

A coincidence of several catastrophic events — from climatic changes caused by the ocean-atmosphere phenomenon La Niña, to the plunge in water and sanitation quality following Haiti’s disastrous January earthquake — provide the most likely explanation for the outbreak, which has hospitalised 17,000 people.

The outbreak suddenly appeared in small communities along the Artibonite River, 60 miles north of the capital Port-au-Prince, on 21 October.