Europe News Desk!!! UNICEF reports that eleven countries in eastern and southern Africa are currently experiencing a rapid increase in cholera cases. UNICEF said 11 countries are facing an extremely worrying cholera outbreak with 67,822 cases and 1,788 estimated deaths, Xinhua news agency reported. He also said that the actual figures are potentially higher due to poor reporting, monitoring systems. Poor water and sanitation, dangerous weather events, ongoing conflicts and weak health systems are complicating and endangering the lives of children across southern Africa, said Leeke van de Wiel, the UN body’s deputy regional director. “We thought the region would not see a widespread and deadly cholera outbreak in this era,” he said in a statement released in Nairobi.
UNICEF appeals for $150 million for all 11 cholera-endemic countries, including $34.9 million for Malawi and $21.6 million for Mozambique, to provide life-saving services to a total of 5.4 million people affected by the outbreak . It added that the public health situation is rapidly deteriorating, especially in the most affected countries. According to UNICEF, in the two countries with the heaviest burden—Malawi and Mozambique—a total of more than 5.4 million people are in need of assistance, including more than 2.8 million children. Last month, the World Health Organization warned that 22 countries around the world are currently battling cholera outbreaks. After years of declining cholera cases globally, cases increased in 2022 and were expected to continue this year. Van de Wiel said this is a serious cholera crisis, and all signs point to it getting worse before it gets better.
We need urgent and continued investment to respond to immediate outbreaks and better prepare systems and communities for the possibility that more severe events will occur in the future. The UN agency will provide life-saving nutrition interventions including nutrition screening in all cholera treatment units, train health workers to provide quality case management and infection prevention and control, and progress severe cholera to non-severe cholera cases to set up community-based oral rehydration points to prevent
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World News Desk!!!