‘Watery diarrhoea’ outbreak leaves 57 dead: Sudan Health Ministry

The Sudanese Ministry of Health issued an update about the ‘acute watery diarrhoea’ outbreak in the country on Saturday. 57 people died from the disease. 3,084 are affected in eastern Sudan’s Blue Nile, Sennar, and Kassala, and in the northern Nile River state.

However, a civil initiative to combat the epidemic spoke of cholera. In a statement on Sunday, the medics who set up the initiative reported the death of 475 people in the period between mid-August and 22 September. 10,215 people are reportedly affected.

The disease spread in Blue Nile, Sennar, Kassala, El Gedaref in eastern Sudan, El Gezira and Khartoum in central Sudan, and Nile River in the north.

New cases

Medical sources informed Radio Dabanga from Karkouj town in Sennar that the town’s hospital admitted nine new acute diarrhoea cases on Sunday, which brought the total number of people afflicted with the disease in the hospital to 26.

The hospital of Sinja, the capital of Sennar, received a number of patients suffering from diarrhoea from the suburbs of the city over the weekend. Sennar state ordered the closure of the schools a week ago for the period of one week, but parents are reluctant to send their children to school again, a medic told this station from Sinja.

'Border closed'

In Khartoum, medical doctors and health care workers, political opposition parties, and civil society organisations held the government responsible for the epidemic. In a joint statement on Sunday, they demanded the declaration of a “health emergency” in the country, and the provision of the necessary aid in the affected states. They called on the Health Ministry to immediately intervene in order to prevent the disease from spreading to other regions, and to regularly update information about the size of the epidemic as well.

Meanwhile, hoteliers in Kassala and traders returning from Eritrea reported that the Eritrean authorities closed the borders with Sudan on Saturday.