More than 8,000 children under the age of five were infected with cholera in the first seven months of the year in North Kivu province of DR Congo, UNICEF said on Friday, sounding the alarm over “the worst crisis” due to the disease since 2017.

In this province, in the eastern part of DR Congo, armed conflicts have been raging for almost three decades, which very often cause mass displacement of populations.

Across the country, 31,342 cholera cases and 230 deaths have been confirmed in the first seven months of 2023, with a large proportion of the people who became infected and died being children, the United Nations Children’s Fund noted.

In the most affected province, North Kivu, there are more than 21,400 cases, of which more than 8,000 are children under the age of five, according to data from the Ministry of Public Health of the DR Congo cited by UNICEF.

“The magnitude of the cholera epidemic and the devastation it threatens to bring should be alarming,” said Sameza Abdullah, UNICEF’s emergency response coordinator in DR Congo, based in Goma.

According to the same official, there is a risk that the epidemic will continue “to spread in IDP camps, where systems are already unable to cope and the population – especially children – is very vulnerable to illness and potentially death”.

In 2017, a cholera epidemic hit almost all regions of the vast country, including the capital Kinshasa: 55,000 confirmed cases and over 1,100 deaths were recorded, he recalled.

In the DR Congo, more than one million young people were counted displaced in the first quarter of 2023, amid an escalation of violence in the eastern part of the country, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced in mid-June.

“Overcrowding conditions prevail in the displaced persons camps”, which facilitate “the transmission of cholera”, UNICEF underlined.

UNICEF is appealing for $62.5 million in funding to boost cholera prevention and response activities over the next five months to help 1.8 million people, including 1 million children, it said, stressing that so far, he has only received “9%” of the amount he is asking for.

In North Kivu, the mass displacement of populations is due to the violence associated with the insurgency of the M23, an armed movement composed mostly of members of the Tutsi tribe, which took up arms again in late 2021 and has taken over vast areas north of Goma.