YAOUNDÈ, Cameroon – UN estimates about a severe cholera outbreak across the Southern Africa region may be wide of the mark, according to a Catholic expert who says the reality may be even worse.
The UN has estimated that there have been more than 3,000 deaths in the past year and almost 200,000 people affected. This crisis has spread across six countries including Mozambique, Malawi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania, while the situation in Zambia and Zimbabwe is reported to be dire and deeply concerning. Communities have been grappling with cholera for the past year, but the past two months have seen an alarming significant spike in cases since the onset of the rainy season.
“These figures might not always be up-to-date or paint the complete picture of the gravity of the situation on the ground,” said Pierre Burgos, an official with Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the overseas humanitarian and development arm of the US Bishops’ Conference. “The reality could be even more grim, as many cases go unreported or untreated.”
Burgos, who is the Humanitarian Response Technical Advisor for a CRS program called Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, or “WASH”, also highlighted the impact of the response to Covid-19, which has exacerbated a variety of factors behind the new epidemic in Southern Africa, including poor hygiene and broken health systems.
“At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of resources were diverted to manage and contain it,” Burgos said. “This meant other health issues, including vaccination programs for other diseases, took a back seat.”
He noted have also been reports of other diseases such as measles, polio (WPV1), anthrax, and even suspected Rift Valley fever in different countries of the region.
“We’re seeing a concerning rise in cases of infectious diseases after the COVID-19 pandemic,” Burgos said. “In addition to the gap in vaccinations, we’re dealing with communities that have had poor access to healthcare, as well as a backlog of routine childhood immunisations. Add to this water quality and sanitation challenges in some areas, and it’s almost like a petri dish for these diseases to spread.”
Cholera is a bacterial infection of the small intestine, usually caused by unsafe water or food, and in extreme cases is fatal, causing somewhere between 30,000 to 130,000 deaths each year globally. Experts say the latest epidemic has hit children in the Southern Africa region especially hard.
Catholic Relief Services has been partnering with governments in the region to tackle the cholera epidemic.
“We’re focusing on providing clean water, sanitation facilities, and hygiene essentials to prevent the spread of cholera,” Burgos said in an interview with Crux.
“The disease is spreading fast and hitting communities hard, especially vulnerable groups such as women, children, people living with disabilities, and the elderly,” he said. “We need to act now to prevent the increasing deaths and loss of livelihoods for affected families and communities.”
Photo: A young boy lies on a bed in a temporary cholera centre in Lilongwe, Malawi, 20 February 2023. The cholera outbreak proved the deadliest in Malawi’s history, while vaccines remained scarce and other African nations reported outbreaks. (Photo by FREDRIK LERNERYD/AFP via Getty Images.)
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