Seven die in cholera outbreak in capital

Nearly 300 cases of cholera have been reported in the capital of Guinea-Bissau over the past two weeks and seven people have died from the highly infectious water-borne disease, Tome Ca, the government's Director General of Health, said on Thursday. Ca said the first cases of cholera were detected in the outer suburbs of Bissau city on 11 June and all but two of the 290 cases registered so far had occurred in the capital. The disease, which is usually associated with poverty and polluted drinking water, causes acute vomiting and diarrhoea leading to a rapid loss of body fluids. It can prove fatal unless treated quickly. Ca noted that the latest cholera epidemic coincided with the onset of the rainy season, when Bissau's water supply becomes particularly prone to pollution. The city's water pipes are old and leaky and piles of rubbish litter the streets. This is the first cholera epidemic to hit Bissau, a city of 300,000 people, for three years. Last year, there was a cholera outbreak in the Bijagos islands offshore, which affected about 100 people and resulted in one death, but it did not spread to other parts of this small West African country. The government has launched a hygiene awareness campaign on television to fight the latest epidemic. It is urging people to boil drinking water and wash their hands before eating food and after going to the toilet. The broadcasts also tell people to wash fruit and vegetables and avoid drinking well water. Ca said the government was trying to prevent the cholera epidemic spreading to the interior of this former Portuguese colony. The only cases so far recorded outside Bissau were in Safim and Bula, two small towns situated north of the capital on the main road to the Senegalese frontier.