Cholera Cases Hit Cyclone-Stricken Mozambique with Far More Feared

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/world/africa/cholera-cyclone-mozambique.html

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Cholera cases in Mozambique among survivors of a devastating cyclone have shot up to at least 139, officials said Friday, as nearly 1 million vaccine doses were rushed to the region and health workers desperately tried to improvise treatment space for victims.

Cholera causes acute diarrhea, is spread by contaminated food and water and can kill within hours if not treated. The disease is a major concern for the hundreds of thousands of cyclone survivors in Mozambique, now living in squalid conditions in camps, schools or damaged homes in the southern African nation.

The Portuguese news agency Lusa quoted Mozambique national health official Ussein Isse for the new toll. Mr. Isse declared the outbreak on Wednesday with just five confirmed cases.

Far more cholera cases already were feared. The medical charity Doctors Without Borders told The Associated Press it is seeing around 200 likely cholera cases a day in the Indian Ocean port city of Beira alone. The city of roughly 500,000 people is the hub of cyclone relief efforts.

The World Health Organization has warned of a “second disaster” if waterborne diseases like cholera spread in the impoverished nation. It said 900,000 oral cholera vaccines were expected to arrive Monday and a vaccination campaign will begin late next week.

Seven treatment centers in Mozambique have been opened by the World Health Organization with a total of 400 beds, including 100 in Beira.

“We assume that there are lots of people who will get sick and we want to get prepared,” a World Health Organization spokesman, Tarik Jasarevic, told reporters in Geneva.

Cyclone Idai, which stuck March 14, destroyed more than 50 health care clinics in central Mozambique, complicating the work to contain the disease, Radio Mozambique reported, quoting Rui Costa, a disaster management official.

It was not clear as of Friday whether any cholera deaths had been confirmed.

The cyclone death toll in Mozambique inched up to 493 on Friday, with at least 259 dead in Zimbabwe and 56 in Malawi. Officials have warned that those numbers are preliminary and final figures may never be known. Some bodies have been found and buried without being registered with authorities. Others were washed away by the power of the storm.

Officials in Zimbabwe have not announced any cholera cases in the country’s cyclone-hit region.

President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique has said the search and rescue phase has ended. He also declared that health care will be free for residents in cyclone-hit areas until the end of the year, Lusa reported.

The United Nations has said 1.8 million people need urgent help across the sodden, largely rural region. Hunger is another growing concern, as the storm wiped out crops on the eve of harvest.