Cholera breaks out in Zanzibar

Three people have died and nine others admitted to hospital following a cholera outbreak on Tanzania's semiautonomous Island of Zanzibar, government officials said on Friday. The deaths occurred in Pemba Island, a sister island of the mainland of Unguja Island that forms Zanzibar. By Friday nine patients had been admitted to the cholera special centre, two in critical condition, Zanzibar's minister of health and social welfare, Sultan Mohamed Mugheiry, told a news conference in Stone Town, the Zanzibar capital. "We had diarrhoea patients last Saturday and one patient died before receiving treatment at Abdallah Mzee Hospital in Pemba," he said. "Diarrhoea cases increased on 20 March, and after the laboratory examination, the cholera virus was identified at least in five patients." Mugheiry said his ministry had launched awareness campaigns on how to contain the disease. He said the ministry had also sent a team of three health officials to Pemba to help curb the epidemic. He attributed the outbreak to negligence in keeping the environment clean and public consumption of unsafe drinking water. The African Development Bank has supported the construction of about 180 public toilets mainly in rural areas in both islands of Unguja and Pemba, but, according to Mugheiry, some people in villages were still relieving themselves in bush or on the beach, instead of using the toilets. Cholera, an acute diarrhoeal disease, is caused by infection of the intestine with the bacterium "vibrio cholerae". The infection is often characterised by profuse watery diarrhoea and vomiting. Patients suffer from rapid loss of body fluids leading to dehydration and shock. Without treatment, usually with fluid infusion, death can occur within hours.