ESAT News (June 7, 2017)
World Vision warned that cholera and Acute Watery Diarrhea outbreak in the Horn of Africa is likely to worsen after recent rains, as 1,400 deaths have already been reported since January 2017.
“Recent rains could lead to spike in child cholera cases across Horn of Africa,” the aid agency warned on Monday.
The report by the World Vision is perhaps the first by an agency to call and declare the disease ‘cholera.’
Ethiopian regime officials, including the newly minted Director General of WHO Tedros Adhanom have refused to call the outbreak Cholera and have been playing down the extent of the scourge.
“Thousands of children are at increased risk, as their ability to fight diseases has decreased due to malnutrition caused by a prolonged drought affecting 22 million people in South Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia,” World Vision warns.
The Somali region of Ethiopia is the most affected by the outbreak and it is difficult to determine the extent of the crises as the Ethiopian regime has denied media and agencies access to the region.
The report said more than 67,000 people reported cholera in Ethiopia and somalia and about 34,000 of the cases is in Ethiopia. The outbreak has now spread to Kenya, according to World Vision. Most of the 1400 deaths, 769 occurred in Ethiopia.
9.1 million people in Ethiopia require clean drinking water along with sanitation and hygiene services, the absence of which has speed up the spread of the outbreak.