March 2010 Vol 9, Health Indaba
Fresh outbreak of cholera affects 100 people in Zimbabwe, says WHO
APA-Harare (Zimbabwe) A resurgent cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe has so far infected about 100 people and claimed three lives since it was detected last November, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reports here Sunday.
APA-Harare (Zimbabwe) A resurgent cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe has so far infected about 100 people and claimed three lives since it was detected last November, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reports here Sunday.
The UN agency also reports that more than 30 others have been infected by a typhoid outbreak that has hit a poor suburb of the Zimbabwean capital Harare.
About 99 cholera cases have been reported in seven of Zimbabwe’s 62 districts over the past four months, according to WHO.
The figure is however significantly lower than the more than 90,000 cases that had been recorded around the same time at the height of another outbreak that ended in July last year.
An outbreak of typhoid fever has been reported by the Harare City Health Department in the suburb of Mabvuku in the eastern part of the city.
“A total of 32 cases and 5 deaths were reported by 7 March, 6 samples were laboratory confirmed to be Salmonella typhi,” WHO said.
The typhoid outbreak is blamed on the perennial water shortages in Mabvuku.
