Sanitation Updates

Lack of pit latrines and general toilet facilities in the northern regions of the country is likely to compromise health officials’ efforts in curbing cholera, a disease that has since early this year claimed more than 37 lives.

Regional Health Director for the Ohangwena Region Dr Naftali Hamata has said if no drastic measures are taken to address the situation, the affected areas should be prepared to have cholera cases every rainy season.

Since Friday, 1 406 suspected cholera cases were recorded in the Ohangwena Region with 17 confirmed laboratory cases and 19 deaths, Dr Hamata said.

Read More - New Era

The East African Standard (Nairobi)
28 April 2008, By Jane Akinyi

A national hand-washing programme funded by the World Bank and other donors has been unveiled. The Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) is supporting the Ministry of Health in a campaign that will have hand washing as part of its activities, to check cholera.

The first phase of the project, which is expected to cost $ 200,000 (Sh12.4 million), and run for three years, starts in September. WSP had used $ 50,000 (Sh3 million) in preparation for the programme, which would benefit many residents of Kisumu town, in the wake of a cholera outbreak in Nyanza.

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By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, Published: April 15, 2008

On a Sunday in July 1832, a fearful and somber crowd of New Yorkers gathered in City Hall Park for more bad news. The epidemic of cholera, cause unknown and prognosis dire, had reached its peak.    (…)        The epidemic left 3,515 dead out of a population of 250,000. (The equivalent death toll in today’s city of eight million would exceed 100,000.) The dreadful time is recalled in art, maps, death tallies and other artifacts in an exhibition, “Plague in Gotham! Cholera in Nineteenth-Century New York,” at the New-York Historical Society. The show will run through June 28.               (…)

Science and medicine advanced more slowly in the 19th century. It was 1883 before the bacterium Vibrio cholerae was discovered to be the agent causing the gastrointestinal disease. But a turning point in prevention came in 1854, when a London physician, Dr. John Snow, established the connection between contaminated water and cholera (…)

Read more The New York Times

A cholera outbreak in Kenya has killed 59 people and lef t 1,200 people hospitalised over the last two months, affecting 16 different districts across northern and western Kenya, medical authorities confirmed on Thursday.
Kenyan Director of Medical Services James Nyikal said since the first case was cited in January, the cholera outbreak has spread across the country as a result of poor sanitation and was partly fueled by heavy rains reported in parts of the country.

“There is no reason why every homestead should not have a toilet and use it,” Nyikal said. (…)

Friday 11 April 2008, from Panapress

Read More Afrik.com

Widespread flooding in southern Angola has been blamed for a surge in cholera, with 4,500 cases of the waterborne disease reported this year, and 150 fatalities.

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“Stagnant ponds create further breeding sites for malaria-carrying mosquitoes; wells and latrines have been contaminated with floodwater, and local communities are cut off from their usual water sources. Without clean water families hit by the floods are at serious risk of death and disease”, said Adam Berthoud, Regional Public Health Advisor for Oxfam.

Read more: IRIN, 1 April 2008

The Director General of Health Services, Dr Sam Zaramba, has blamed the persistent outbreaks of cholera in Kampala on City Council’s failure to enforce by-laws on sanitation.

Dr Zaramba told Daily Monitor yesterday that the sanitation situation in most of the areas where cholera cases have been reported is appalling mainly due to low latrine coverage.

Link to article on the Cholera News Feed