Haiti’s raging cholera epidemic showed no sign of relenting yesterday with the death toll rising to 1,250, amid debate over whether to delay next week’s key election until the outbreak is brought under control.

Aid groups sought to ramp up their work in the wake of deadly violence which had hampered the anti-cholera battle, while the UN starkly warned that the global community has lagged in its assistance since the epidemic began in October.

“The number of (cholera) focal points of infection are increasing, and those that appeared a month ago are not extinguished,” said French doctor Gerard Chevallier, a cholera specialist studying the epidemic and advising Haiti’s Health Ministry.

“There were about 20 communities at the beginning of the cholera, and there are now about 50 to 100 communities affected,” he said.

Among them is the teeming capital Port-au-Prince, where authorities now report 64 deaths from the disease, including 20 children under age five.

Fears have swelled that the outbreak could explode if it takes hold in the capital’s squalid tent cities that are housing several hundred thousand earthquake survivors in unsanitary conditions.

But aid group Oxfam International said that as of yesterday the camps had not seen dramatic infection rates.