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Cholera outbreak in North Kivu worsens

Women carry jerry cans of water at the Plage du Peuple, north Kivu, eastern DRC, 13 September 2006. Following a cholera outbreak in Goma earlier this year, UNICEF and OXFAM set up a project to provide people with safe chlorinated drinking water, which is Tiggy Ridley/IRIN
    KINSHASA

    An outbreak of cholera in North Kivu province, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has claimed more sufferers in the past two weeks, medical and humanitarian officials said.

    The most severely affected areas were the health zones of Pinga and Mweso, which lie in the North Kivu districts of Masisi and Walikale.

    "The cholera epidemic has fluctuated in [northern Masisi] but over the past couple of weeks we have seen a dramatic rise in [the number of] cases," said Gaby Lumangamenga of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) in the North Kivu capital, Goma on 19 May.

    According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Goma, between 28 April and 11 May there were 18 fatalities among 107 recorded cases of cholera in Pinga health Zone.

    The neighbouring Mweso health zone is much smaller than Pinga. But although 328 cases of cholera were recorded in Mweso zone between late January and mid-May at two cholera treatment centres run by MSF-Holland, the mortality rate in this zone was much lower and only four deaths were recorded during that period.

    Lumangamenga said Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Solidarités had built water chlorination facilities and latrines but the problem persisted because the residents did not like to drink chlorinated water.

    "They say it has a disagreeable smell and persist in drinking water from rivers," Lumangamenga said.

    North Kivu's Masisi area has, in the past, been the theatre of fighting between several armed groups that have continued to wage war in eastern Congo, despite a 2003 peace agreement that restored calm to most parts of the country.

    OCHA estimates that Mweso zone has up to 70,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Kitchanga, Kachuga, Kalembe and Mweso villages, which have a combined population of 213,000.

    According to OCHA, of the 25 health zones in North Kivu five are affected by cholera. Some 857,000 people in the province have been displaced from their homes because of clashes involving a range of armed groups including government forces, renegade soldiers, Rwandan rebels and several militia groups.

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    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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