Central Darfur: Nierteti records 13 new suspected cholera cases

The medical isolation centres in Nierteti in Central Darfur received 13 new cases of ‘acute watery diarrhoea’, suspected to be cholera, on Friday.

A medical volunteer informed Radio Dabanga from Nierteti town that the isolation ward of the Nierteti Hospital admitted one new patient on Friday, bringing the total number of people currently being treated in the ward to five.

The isolation unit in Kuweila village, east of Nierteti, is now treating 21 patients after receiving four new cases, while the unit in Mara village registered six new cases, bringing the total number of patients to 24 on Friday.

The source further said that seven people are being treated in the isolation centre in Korifal village, after it received two new cases on Friday.

Rough roads

Last week, the Central Darfur Health Minister, Musa Mohamed Khatir, advised people living in the villages in the southern part of Jebel Marra (eastern Nierteti locality) to use donkeys to transport their infected relatives to the isolation centres because of the lack of transportation on the rough roads.

According to Khatir, the number of new cases of “acute watery diarrhoea” in the locality decreased lately, after the disease reappeared in the area of Nierteti early this year.

According to cases reported to this station, the death toll in Nierteti this year amounts to 19 people. More than 250 people have been infected.

Epidemic

In spite of numerous independent confirmations (conducted according to World Health Organisation (WHO) standards) that the disease which broke out in Blue Nile State in August 2016 was cholera, the Sudanese authorities and several international organisations still call it ‘Acute Watery Diarrhoea’.

The spread of the infectious disease in Sudan last year turned into epidemic proportions. The WHO and the Sudanese Ministry of Health reported in mid-October that the total number of recorded cases reached more than 35,000 people – including 800 related deaths. Doctors of Sudan’s National Epidemiological Corporation reported in early July however, that nearly 24,000 Sudanese had been infected and 940 cholera patients died.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in January, a slight increase in “acute watery diarrhoea” cases was reported in the country during the last week of 2017 and the first week of this year: 46 and 30 new cases respectively were registered.

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