NEW ORLEANS, Sept 7: Disease brewed by Hurricane Katrina claimed its first victims, officials said on Wednesday, as political polemics sharpened over the federal response to the country’s worst natural disaster.

With the authorities working hard to empty New Orleans of water and the last diehard survivors, the crisis sparked by last week’s storm that left thousands feared dead took on a new, worrying dimension.

Health authorities said five people evacuated from hurricane-battered areas of the Gulf Coast after Katrina struck had died after coming into contact with contaminated water.

Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the government Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said one case was reported this week in the state of Texas and others in Mississippi.

The five had been killed by vibrio vulnificus, “a bacteria that can enter somebody through a cut, a scratch or a wound,” Skinner told AFP, adding the elderly or those with a fragile immune system were most at risk.

The bacteria is related to cholera and was likely to kill again, Skinner said. “There will be some more deaths associated with vibrio vulnificus in the affected areas, particularly New Orleans.”

Doctors have been warning the Gulf Coast could become fertile terrain for cholera, malaria, typhoid, West Nile virus or other ailments. But no major outbreaks have been reported.—AFP