Cholera in the north

Parts of northern Nigeria are threatened by a major outbreak of cholera which has claimed at least 60 lives since the beginning of June, local health officials said. At least 20 people have died in the past week in cholera outbreaks in Zaria and Sabon Gari local government areas of the northcentral state of Kaduna, where over 200 people are critically ill in hospitals, the officials said. “Available records show that out of 200 people admitted at the Gambo Sawaba Hospital in Zaria, 16 lost their lives last week,” a senior official in the Kaduna State health department told IRIN on Tuesday. He said at the Bambam Health Centre, also in Zaria, 58 people were admitted and four died. The officials said Kaduna Governor Mohammed Makarfi visited the two affected local government areas at the weekend and donated 1,200 cartons of drugs for the treatment of patients. He also promised to do everything possible to halt the spread of the disease. The latest outbreak of cholera, blamed on poor sanitary conditions amid widespread poverty in the mainly rural affected communities marks a westerly shift in the spread of the infection, first reported in early June in the north-eastern state of Borno. No fewer than 30 people were reported dead in the affected communities of Biu and Hawul in the Lake Chad region bordering Chad and Cameroon. Health officials warn that a major cholera epidemic was imminent in much of northern Nigeria where the rural poor lack access to potable water and rely on unhygenic water sources for domestic use and drinking. “There is an urgent need to fight the disease on all fronts if we are to prevent a major health disaster in these parts,” an official told IRIN.