Nearly 10,000 cholera cases, 150 deaths in Tanzania: WHO

A major cholera outbreak in Tanzania has now infected nearly 10,000 people and killed 150, the World Health Organization said on Friday, voicing concern that predicted flooding risked spreading the disease internationally.

Since the beginning of the outbreak in August, at least 9,871 people have become infected and 150 have died, the UN health agency said, citing laboratory confirmed figures from Tanzanian health authorities.

That marks a doubling of the figures provided a month ago, when WHO put the number of cases at 4,922, including 74 deaths.

The east African country’s largest city Dar es Salaam was most affected, with nearly 4,500 cases, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told reporters in Geneva.

Cholera, which is transmitted through contaminated drinking water and causes acute diarrhoea, has spread across the country, including to two islands in the Zanzibar archipelago.

Chaib stressed that a “very aggressive” campaign to manage the outbreak, including water chlorination and increased surveillance to quickly identify affected areas, had begun bringing down the number of daily reported cases.

But she pointed out that a strong El Nino, a natural phenomenon that sparks global climate extremes, along with the upcoming rainy season in Tanzania was expected to “bring extensive flooding and unusually high rainfalls, (which could) increase the transmission and international spread of the disease.”  Cholera is endemic in the region, so the fear that the disease could spread beyond Tanzania’s borders is justified.