Two die of ‘acute watery diarrhoea’ in Sudan’s Blue Nile state

The Blue Nile state Doctors’ Committee has confirmed on Tuesday that two patients in El Roseires Hospital died due to acute watery diarrhoea. Nine people suffering from the same disease have been hospitalised in an isolation ward. One of the victims was 85 years old, the other died because of delays in reaching the hospital.

The committee described the isolation ward as very modest. It said an emergency room was established in the state Ministry of Health in Ed Damazin to deal with water chlorination, isolation and distribution of protective medications.

NCP office

An agreement has been made with the district committees of El Roseires to turn the office of the ousted National Congress Party (NCP), opposite the hospital, into an isolation ward as it meets the necessary requirements.

The Blue Nile state Doctors’ Committee statement also pointed to the establishment of a separate clinic within the new isolation ward to medically examine patients with diarrhoea, hospitalise them when necessary and follow them up within the ward.

It warned that only five doctors are working in the isolation ward, calling on all doctors to help them in receiving patients and following them up.

Last year the Sudanese Ministry of Health acknowledged that 800 out 36,000 cases infected with ‘acute watery diarrhoea’ resulted in fatalities in 2017.

Suspected cholera

Sudan has experienced an epidemic in 2016-2017 which Sudanese government sources and several international organisations persistently referred to as ‘acute watery diarrhoea’ – 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 WHO and the Sudanese Ministry of Health reported in October 2018 that the total number of recorded cases in 2017 reached more than 35,000 – including 800 related deaths. Yet, doctors of Sudan’s National Epidemiological Corporation reported in July last year that nearly 24,000 Sudanese had been infected and 940 cholera patients died in 2017.

In May 2018, Sudan’s then federal Minister of Health declared that Sudan free of the ’watery diarrhoea’ outbreak (suspected to be cholera).

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