Port-au-Prince , Haiti ( CNN ) -- At least 45 people , most of them voodoo priests , have been lynched in Haiti since the beginning of the cholera epidemic by angry mobs blaming them for the spread of the disease , officials said . `` People who practice voodoo have nothing to do with the cholera epidemic , '' said Max Beauvoir , the head of a voodoo organization in the Caribbean country . Beauvoir said Thursday that he has appealed to authorities to help before the situation gets worse . Some of the victims were killed with machetes , others were burned alive by mobs that added tires and gasoline to stoke the fires . The cholera outbreak started in October . Forty of the victims were found in a southwest area of Haiti called Grand Anse , said Moise Fritz Evens , a communications ministry official . The victims have been targeted because of `` misinformation '' that had been circulating in the community that voodoo practitioners were spreading cholera by using witchcraft , according to communications Minister Marie-Laurence Lassegue . `` It was necessary to increase awareness of the disease and educate the population countrywide instead of getting into a religious war that has no ending , '' Lassegue said . The killings add to ongoing woes that have hit the island after the devastating earthquake in January . About 220,000 people were killed in the earthquake , and countless others left homeless . A cholera outbreak after the earthquake has killed more than 2,000 people , health officials said .
one of the victims were found in About 220,000 area in southwest Haiti . The cholera outbreak hit Haiti after the October earthquake . 40 people were killed in the earthquake .