Cholera outbreak on wane after 42 deaths

A cholera outbreak which has killed at least 42 people and infected almost 1,400 since the beginning of the year in western Cameroon despite government measures to contain the disease, is finally receding, health officials told IRIN on Monday. In the worst-hit area for example, in the coastal Littoral province, where 29 people have died and 1,141 were infected, fatalities were sharply down this month, said Antoine Mouangue, who heads the province's hospital services. “We are now in an endemic phase, having registered three to 11 cholera cases per week over the last weeks,” he said in a telephone interview from Douala, the country’s economic capital. “Previously, we had registered up to 80 new cases a week,” he said, referring to Littoral province during the period between 27 December and 8 March. In the city of Douala, where there were more than 500 cases of cholera but good medical facilities, there were only three deaths. Also badly affected by the outbreak were two Cameroonian provinces bordering Nigeria, West province and South-West province. West province had registered 131 cases of cholera and eight deaths since 28 March, but no new cases had been detected in the last four days, the province’s public health delegate Hammadou Fopa told IRIN on Monday. Fopa said that when the epidemic began he had dispatched an additional team of nurses and medical doctors to treat the ill but some people were suspicious of modern medicine. "Our medical teams went from one town and village to another, training traditional rulers to teach their subjects ways of preventing the disease, but many of the ill prefer a traditional cure instead of modern medicine," he said. Cholera is an acute intestinal infection usually caused by poor sanitation and dirty drinking water. It triggers severe diarrhea and vomiting that leads to dehydration and can prove fatal unless treated quickly. Fopa said the main cause of the spread of cholera was poor hygiene in households. "Many people eat with their hands and most of them don't wash their hands before eating," he said, adding that "some of the victims consume poorly treated water." In South-West province five of the 85 people infected have died, the province’s public health delegate Martin Mafany told IRIN. But no new cases had been recorded over the last two weeks. Cholera is endemic in Cameroon, where it breaks out every year from December through June if not properly tackled. In 2004 at least 6,400 people were infected nationwide and more than 130 people died of cholera across the country, according to government figures. A majority of the victims were found in the West and Littoral provinces.