Cholera kills hundreds as rain pounds West Africa
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Cholera outbreaks triggered partly by heavy rains battering West Africa have killed hundreds of people in the past few months, prompting appeals for medicine to help thousands of sufferers, U.N. officials said on Friday.
The disease has struck as far afield as tiny Guinea-Bissau, where the government has banned sales of water in markets to combat the waterborne disease, to giant Congo, where 16 people travelling in a military convoy died of the infection.
“It is the height of the rainy season and alarm bells are ringing after the increase in cases,” said Sophie Thomle, information officer at the regional U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Senegal’s capital Dakar.
Cholera can kill victims within 24 hours by inducing vomiting and diarrhoea that cause severe dehydration, but is treatable using a simple mixture of water and rehydration salts.
Often associated with heavy rains that can flood latrines or contaminate wells, the disease usually only kills the poorest people who cannot afford basic healthcare.
“There are several factors as to why the epidemic is so bad including heavy rains and sanitation issues,” Claire-Lise Chaignat, coordinator of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) global Cholera task force, told Reuters.
The total of recorded Cholera cases in West Africa this year stands at 24,621, with at least 401 deaths in the affected countries of Burkina Faso, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal, according to U.N. data.
Guinea-Bissau is the country hardest hit by the epidemic, where the number of people who have died has more than doubled to 188 since August 9, when the death toll stood at 84.
An official in the health ministry in the capital Bissau, which has borne the brunt of the epidemic, said more than 9,000 cases had been recorded and that the disease was spreading rapidly in the provinces of the former Portuguese colony.
Portugal, France and China have provided some aid, but U.N. officials said more help was needed to treat the sick.
The government has banned the sale of water and food at markets to try to halt the spiralling epidemic and organised residents and soldiers into groups to help clean up streets on Wednesday, which was declared a public holiday to fight Cholera.
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