Twenty-nine people died of cholera in one week in Cameroon, mainly in the west of the country, which faces a “surge in cases“, announced Friday, March 25 the Minister of Health.
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This acute diarrheal disease, from which one can die in a few hours in the absence of treatment, reappears periodically in this Central African country with a population of more than 25 million. “Between March 16 and 22, 2022, an outbreak of cholera cases is observed in the South West with more than 300 notified cases“wrote Manaouda Malachie on Twitter. Twenty-seven people have died of cholera in three major cities in western Cameroon, and two in the capital Yaoundé. Since October 2021, the cholera epidemic has killed 62 people with nearly 2,100 cases recorded, according to Dr Malachie. “The incident management system has been activated (…) to ensure the coordination of the measures taken and the reactive vaccination“wrote the minister. The previous resurgence of cholera killed 66 people in Cameroon between January and August 2020.
At the beginning of 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that there were 1.3 to 4 million cases of cholera each year and 21,000 to 143,000 deaths from this disease worldwide. “Safe, oral cholera vaccines should be used in conjunction with improved water supply and sanitation to limit cholera outbreaks and promote prevention in areas known to be at high risk“, according to the UN organization.