Poor hygiene and isolation of the tribe had Palawanon treatment of the disease difficult to make doctors initially misdiagnosed as diarrhea, the health department said.
The government agency sent a medical team to the island of Palawan last week to check the outbreak of cholera was found to blame, said Manuel Mapu, the head of the mission.
"The whole area has no water system and no bathrooms. Being Indian tribes, these people just defecate anywhere," he told AFP.
He said samples of rivers used for drinking water tribe showed they were contaminated with feces.
In previous news reports said 30 people had died of the disease, but a check found only 19 deaths, said Mapu.
The isolation of the tribe, to any hospital in the area, had been difficult to treat, he added.
"We had to walk for two or three hours, crossing streams and shallow rivers and climb mountains that were a little hard with a lot of bushes to reach them," he told AFP.
Families were being given special containers with water filters and local leaders are taught to dig latrines and use, Mapu said.
Head of government epidemiologist Eric Tayag said the tribe would have to be taught to prevent cholera.
"We have to teach sanitation and we must ensure that those who become sick immediately be identified," Tayag said on local television.
Anthropologists say that some 30,000 people speak various dialects related Palawanon tribe, whose members live in isolated communities scattered throughout the interior of Palawan.
