16 die in cholera outbreak near Senegalese border

A cholera outbreak in western Mali caused by villagers drinking polluted river water has killed 16 people over the past two weeks, the Malian Health Ministry said on Wednesday. It said in a statement that 133 cases of cholera and 16 deaths from the disease were recorded in the Kayes region near the western border with Senegal between 20 June and 4 July. Fifteen new cases of the water-borne disease, which causes rapid dehydration of the body through acute diarrhoea and vomiting, were recorded on Monday, it added. Doctor Cheikna Drame, the government's director of health in the Kayes region, told IRIN that extra health workers had been sent to the affected villages and the government was distributing disinfectant. “I think we have brought the situation under control,” he told IRIN, declining to comment further. Frances Turner, the representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Mali, who had just visited the cholera-infected area, agreed. “They have it under control. But I say that with a lot of reservation, because cholera can crop up again,” she told IRIN on Tuesday. Turner said the authorities were using television and town criers to inform residents in the Kayes region of the danger of drinking contaminated water from the Senegal and Faleme rivers, which have been swollen by the recent start of the rainy season. In some villages, people seen taking water from the river were being fined, she said. “They have taken very good measures so far,” said Turner, who took part in a joint mission to the area with the Minister of Health and local representatives of the World Health Organisation (WHO). The Health Ministry said eight villages in the communes of Faleme, Fegui and Tafasirga, close to the Senegal border had been affected so far by the cholera outbreak. Turner said trains on the Dakar to Bamako railway line were being disinfected as they crossed the border and the authorities were instructing passengers to observe strict hygiene and drink clean water to avoid contracting cholera.