Cholera cases reported in Monrovia

At least four out of over 600 diarrhoea patients reported in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, since July were suffering from cholera, according to government health officers.

Additional cholera cases are likely to be reported because of poor water supply and sanitary conditions in the country generally and in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs), they said. Continuing heavy rains could help the spread of the disease, they added.

Most of the people presenting with diarrhoea, and who were treated at the main John F Kennedy hospital, were from the densely populated suburbs of the city centre, from Gardnerville and Paynesville, and from IDP camps on the outskirts of the capital, according to sources in Monrovia.

Health ministry epidemiologist Charles Nagbe told IRIN on Friday - after a disease surveillance meeting held at the ministry - that chlorination of wells in Monrovia and around the country was due to begin.

The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO)was helping the ministry conduct a month-long water and sanitation needs assessment, Nagbe said. Some
members of the assessment team had been dispatched to the seven rural counties of Grand Bassa, Rivercess, Rivergee, Grand Kru, Maryland, Grand Gedeh and Sinoe.

A workshop to train 50 local health environment workers was also planned, Francis Kanu, head of the assessment team told IRIN.

Some 68 percent of Liberians have no access to safe water and 64 percent have no access to proper sanitation. In Monrovia, which has a population of at
least one million people, residents have no access to treated pipe-borne water.

The main water treatment plant at White Plains on the outskirts of Monrovia suffered extensive damage during the country's civil war in the 1990s. Power supply systems were also damaged, leaving the country without electricity.

The public water company, Liberia Water and Sanitation Corporation, has not been able to repair the water treatment plant and restore safe water supply since then.