One hundred and forty people have died of cholera since October 2021 in Cameroon, where more than 7,000 cases of the disease have been recorded since its recurrence, the Prime Minister of the African state announced yesterday.
Cholera, a disease that causes acute diarrhea and can kill within hours without treatment, is recurring sporadically in the vast central African country of more than 25 million people.
“Updates on the epidemiological situation speak of a total of 7,287 reported cases since October 2021, including 140 deaths,” Joseph John Ngute was quoted as saying in a press release.
An earlier report, released in March, put the death toll at 62 out of a total of 2,100 cases. “Three districts continue to record new patients,” he said, adding that Litoral, mainly its capital – and the country’s economic capital -, Douala, the western district and the English-speaking southwestern district.
A vaccination campaign is scheduled to begin in the country in June, according to the government.
The previous cholera outbreak in Cameroon, from January to August 2020, had claimed the lives of 66 people.
At the beginning of 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that between 1.3 and 1.4 million cases of cholera and 21,000 to 143,000 deaths from the disease were recorded worldwide each year.
There are “safe oral cholera vaccines” and “they should be used in conjunction with improved water and sanitation to reduce cholera outbreaks and prevent prevention in known high-risk areas,” she said. UN service.
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