Deaths from acute watery diarrhoea, "cholera" reported

At least 82 people have died in the past four weeks following an outbreak of cholera in the towns of Beletweyne, Buulo Burte and Jalalaqsi in the Hiiraan region of central Somalia, medical sources said on Monday.

"At least 82 people, 50 of them children, have died of cholera in the three districts," said Hassan Odawa, programme manager for the International Medical Corps (IMC) in Beletweyne, the regional capital of Hiiraan.

Cholera treatment centres, he added, were set up on 3 February in the affected districts by agencies dealing with the outbreak, and by the Cholera Task Force for the region, of which the IMC is the lead agency.

The outbreak was confirmed following tests carried out by AMREF in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. "We have had 110 cases in the three districts since last week," Odawa said. "In Beletweyne, 15 cases, with two deaths.
In Buulo Burte we had 38 cases with one death. In Jalalaqsi we had 57 cases with 12 fatalities."

He said that throughout Hiiraan at least 1,229 cases had been recorded, with 150 deaths since the outbreak on 5 January, of "what was thought at the time to be watery diarrhoea".

Odawa blamed the outbreak on recent floods that devastated the region and contaminated water drawn from wells. "We suspect the problem is the water people are drinking," he said. "The floods destroyed many wells and latrines, allowing sewage into wells."

The floods, mostly in late 2006, displaced tens of thousands of people in the region, with large tracts of farmland submerged.

"We have started chlorinating the wells in all the districts but, unfortunately, we are having difficulty in accessing some of the remote villages due to lack of transport," Odawa said.

At the moment, he added, there were enough oral rehydration salts: "But if the situation does not stabilise soon we will need to get more resources to contain the outbreak."

Jalalaqsi was the worst-affected area with villagers around the town unable to bring their sick to the treatment centre, according to Ahmed Abdulle Gure of the Somali Red Crescent Society, whose agency is running the town's treatment centre.

"We have been told of villagers dying in their villages because of lack of transportation and other logistical problems," Gure said, adding that the situation was improving in places like Beletweyne.

ah/jm