Cholera epidemic claims more lives

Angola's cholera epidemic continues to worsen with the number of deaths countrywide topping 1,000, according to figures released by the World Health Organization (WHO).

WHO has reported a total of 1,145 deaths in 10 of the country's 18 provinces, all of which have been affected, and 30,011 cumulative cases. In one 24-hour period last week, 792 new cases and 24 deaths were reported, said the UN agency.

Bottled water has been flying off the shelves in supermarkets in the capital, Luanda, as wealthier Angolans stock up to avoid relying on piped water.

The outbreak is mainly affecting the country's numerous poor slums, inhabited largely by people displaced by a devastating 27-year civil war that ended in 2002, where overcrowding and appalling sanitation help the waterborne disease spread quickly.

Last month, as heavy rains accelerated the epidemic, Richard Veerman of the medical relief agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) described the situation as a "national emergency", adding that the number of cases - which then stood at 20,000 - "at least will double".

"It started in the least developed suburbs of Luanda and spread," Pierre-Francois Pirlot, the United Nations Development Fund Resident Representative, said last week.

This is the first outbreak in the capital in over 10 years. Interior parts of Angola haven't seen cholera for even longer, as people rarely travelled in the hinterland during the war, giving the disease little chance to spread.

Angola, sub-Saharan Africa's second largest oil producer after Nigeria, is currently in the middle of a reconstruction boom fuelled by high prices for the commodity. But ironically, while the government is trying to rehabilitate infrastructure, it is also helping cases of the disease to multiply.