The cholera epidemic in Cameroon did not finish

Cameroon is strongly affected by a cholera epidemic in northern Iraq. The authorities already identify 155 deaths and 2078 patients, the highest price since a decade.

Disappeared in the USA, cholera is not provided eradicated from the face of the planet according to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), 120,000 people die each year from the disease and 3 to 5 million people contract it.

The bacilliform bacterium Vibrio cholerae is the infectious agent of cholera. It reaches the digestive tract, causing severe diarrhea that usually dehydrate patients whose outcome can be fatal within hours. The disease is easily spread from fecal-oral way, by consuming contaminated food or water. If the primary way to guard remains hygiene, lack of health facilities makes prevention difficult.

However, there are treatments against cholera, based rehydration salts, which are effective if they are followed (mortality less than 1%). In areas where treatments are not administered, the mortality can reach 30-50%. It is also effective vaccines but for a limited time only, and their price is a deterrent, so they are often used by travelers venturing into Western countries at risk.

This is why many countries still suffer from the disease. This is the case of Cameroon where since May 6, when the first case detected, the cholera epidemic continues to grow. Monday, August 9, the Ministry of Health of Cameroon listing 155 deaths and 2078 cases, and August 12, some sources speak of 170 deaths and 2,266 cases reported. So far, the number of districts affected by the disease are at number 17 of the 28 that comprise the region.

A set of aggravating factors

The lack of clean water and sanitation are the two main factors in the spread of the disease. Gervais Ondobo the Cameroonian Ministry of Health says that only 29% of the population of northern Uganda has access to a source of drinking water and less than 5% have access to latrines (toilets rudimentary).

The lack of literacy of the population is also an aggravating factor. Prevention campaigns have been initiated but the panels on display in French or English are totally useless in a region mostly illiterate and the language most commonly practiced is the Fulani (or foufouldé). Other causes contributing to the epidemic are the rainy season and the mobility of the population, who favor the presence of polluted water contaminating.

This epidemic is most severe in the last decade which has already undergone two previous ones: in 2009 and 2004, cholera had respectively 51 and 100 deaths in the country. It remains smaller than the epidemic that hit Zimbabwe in 2008, killing more than 1,000 dead. The humanitarian organizations (UN, UNICEF, Red Cross, WHO) which provide free treatment to the population against cholera are now struggling to keep numbers as low as possible.