16 cholera dead in West Darfur camp

In just one week, 16 people died of cholera in Murnei camp in West Darfur. In Red Sea state in eastern Sudan, cholera reportedly re-emerged and claimed the life of a girl.

A sheikh in Murnei camp reported to Radio Dabanga that 70 camp residents have been infected and approximately 28 people have been hospitalised in the isolation ward of the camp. The 16 displaced people died from cholera in the period between Saturday until Sunday.

In Red Sea state in eastern Sudan, a young girl died from what was suspected to be cholera in Sinkat Hospital on Monday morning, a source informed this station. The medical director of the hospital, however, reported that they received cases of normal diarrhoea.

Dr Mohamed Ali further told Radio Dabanga that laboratory examination and the symptoms patients show did not point to cases of watery diarrhoea or cholera. “These are cases of diarrhoea that may be caused by food, water or environmental pollution.”

Sudan’s first cases of cholera were recorded in Blue Nile state in August last year. Since then, the disease spread in eastern Sudan, and later to the Northern State and central Sudan’s El Gezira. In April, sources in White Nile state reported a rapid spread of cholera. The disease then spread to North Kordofan, and fully hit Khartoum in May.

The epidemic – referred to as “acute watery diarrhoea” by the Sudanese government and several international agencies operating in Sudan – quickly spread in the camps for displaced people in Darfur when the first cases emerged in the region last June.

‘Acute watery diarrhoea’

“The apparent unwillingness of the Government of Sudan to declare the cholera epidemic in the country severely affected national and international mobilisation efforts to rescue the victims and to provide them with the necessary protection,” a group of 30 human rights and civil society advocates, organisations, and activists wrote in a letter to the World Health Organization (WHO). They urge the organisation to quickly intervene and effectively address the cholera epidemic in Sudan.

In the past the DRDC, among others, lobbied for the WHO and other relief agencies to develop emergency plans with Khartoum after it would declare the existence of cholera in the country and stopped using ambiguous terms for the disease.

The WHO, as well as the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) are responding to the ‘acute watery diarrhoea’ disease by establishing health facilities in a number of Sudan’s affected states, and training medical staff, a recent humanitarian news bulletin reported.

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