NIGER: Cholera epidemic follows floods
Pastor Dale Morgan
*NIGER: Cholera epidemic follows floods*
26 Sep 2006 18:17:14 GMT
Source: IRIN
NIAMEY, 26 September (IRIN) - Cholera has claimed 21 lives among 206
infected people in Niger following seasonal rains that have flooded
communities and left them unable to cope with a health crisis.
The United Nations has sent emergency aid to Niger following the
flooding, which has affected 43,000 people. The government says 10,000
people have lost their homes.
The UN children's agency, UNICEF, has sent medicine, the World Health
Organisation (WHO) has dispatched a team to evaluate the situation, and
the World Food Programme (WFP) is also providing assistance. Urgent
needs include food, treated mosquito nets and blankets.
A joint task force of the UN, Red Cross and NGOs has been put in place
to monitor the cholera epidemic. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is
overseeing an isolation unit 12 km south of the town Zinder, which is in
the far southeast of the country.
"The situation is under control," said Moussa Fatimata, secretary
general of the Public Health Ministry.
He said epidemic management teams had been dispatched to affected
regions and residents were receiving education about proper sanitation,
especially in terms of potable water, to prevent further spread of the
disease.
Cholera is an acute intestinal infection spread by contaminated water or
food. It provokes vomiting and diarrhoea and can lead to death within
hours. When it occurs in an unprepared community, fatality rates can be
as high as 50 percent, according to the WHO. The illness, however, can
be easily prevented through proper hygiene and quickly treated with oral
re-hydration salts.
Nigerien health authorities said Zinder, 900 km east of the capital,
Niamey, was the worst affected. They said eight people died and another
100 with symptoms of vomiting and diarrheoa were taken to a regional
hospital centre for treatment.
Health authorities said they registered 141 cases of cholera as of 22
September in the Zinder neighbourhoods of Babban Tapki, Sabongari,
Kara-Kara, Djagoundi, Birni and Nassaraoua Idi.
In Madarounfa, 700 km east of Niamey, seven deaths were reported among
44 cases of cholera. In Konni, 400 km east of Niamey, the toll was four
dead among 16 registered cases. In Diffa, 1,300 km east of Niamey, two
out of five infected people died.
Landlocked Niger, hemmed in by the Sahara desert in north central
Africa, is the poorest country in the world, according to the UN's Human
Development Index (HDI), which ranks 177 countries according to factors
such as access to healthcare, literacy and life expectancy.
Niger's population has boomed while desertification and soil
desalination have stripped the earth of nutrients, meaning thousands of
the country's 12 million people regularly fail to grow enough food to
feed themselves. As nutrition has slumped, diseases such as polio,
measles, cholera and sleeping sickness that nearly have been stamped out
in many other sub-Saharan countries have sometimes become epidemic.
Although the Nigerien government spends 12 percent of its GDP on
healthcare, according to the HDI, there are still only three doctors per
100,000 people in Niger. Twenty percent of Nigerien children die before
their fifth birthday, mostly from malaria.