Angola cholera cases rise
2007-01-29 18:15
Luanda - Cholera cases have surged to "alarming" levels in Angola after deadly floods left thousands of people without clean drinking water and access to sewage facilities, said aid workers on Monday.
An average of 90 cases of the potentially fatal intestinal infection are being reported each day in the province of Luanda, which includes the capital, compared to an average of 15 to 20 cases before heavy rains triggered floods last week.
"There has been a five-fold increase in the number of cases in relation to one week ago, which is a lot. Yes, it's quite alarming," said Mark van Boekel, head of Medicins Sans Frontieres Holland in Angola.
There have been a handful of deaths, but the authorities cannot say whether these are directly related to the recent flooding.
But with parts of Luanda, including its slums, submerged in fetid water and more rain forecast, aid workers say the outbreak may worsen in the coming weeks and the death toll could eclipse that of the floods, which have killed at least 90 people.
Cholera is spread through contaminated water and food and usually marked by vomiting and acute diarrhoea. Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to the disease, often dying from severe dehydration within 24 hours after infection.
An oil-rich nation that is emerging from a 27-year civil war that shattered bridges, roads and drainage systems, Angola has faced a number of cholera outbreaks in recent years. More than 1 800 people died last year in its worst outbreak in a decade.
Government criticised for reacting slowly
Millions of Angolans lack access to health care, including the antibiotics and dehydration salts that easily treat cholera, and the country routinely struggles to get basic medical supplies to areas cut off by poor or non-existent roads.
One-quarter of all children in the former Portuguese colony, sub-Saharan Africa's second largest oil producer after Nigeria, do not survive to their fifth birthday.
With the end of the civil war in 2002 and the beginning of an oil-financed reconstruction boom, Angola's leaders have said they are committed to improving basic health care and developing other social programmes.
But the government has been criticised for reacting slowly to the cholera epidemic and the health sector as a whole.
"They are making billions in oil revenues, but their general priorities do not seem to include health," said one foreign aid worker.
But others credit the government in Luanda for making progress, albeit slowly, in the health sector and learning from its most recent brush with cholera. Van Boekel noted that Angola seemed to be better equipped now than it was last year.
"There is a better preparedness among the population, the international agencies and authorities," he said.
"(But) in poor neighbourhoods there isn't always potable water to drink and the sanitary conditions are bad. So the preparedness doesn't change the cause, it only improves the response," he added.
Fears of a jump in cholera cases are not confined to Angola.
Authorities in Mozambique and Zambia have said they are concerned about outbreaks of the disease after floods prompted thousands to flee to crowded emergency camps and unsheltered higher ground in the two southern African nations.