Cholera outbreak in South Sudan claims 60 lives, with fears outbreak will worsen

By Africa correspondent Martin Cuddihy July 17, 2014, 2:23 pm

A cholera outbreak in South Sudan has claimed 60 lives and there are fears more people will die.

The disease is spreading beyond the nation's capital of Juba and into remote areas where it is difficult to get health care.

The sickness is described as just another symptom of the civil war, as many people live in internal displacement camps where the illness spreads quickly.

With heavy rains expected in South Sudan, the outbreak is expected to get worse.

Africa correspondent Martin Cuddihy visited one of the treatment centres in the capital.

At the height of this crisis as many as 100 patients were arriving at the centre each day and while the rate has slowed down a bit since then, the disease is still spreading.

The doctors and a number of non-governmental organisations like UNICEF, Medicines Sans Frontiers and Medair are all in South Sudan to try and contain the outbreak.

A disease of impoverished nations

Every year somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people die from cholera, which is almost exclusively a disease of impoverished nations.

Agnes Abas believes a juice she bought from a market made her fall sick with the infection."I am not unlucky, I just fell sick because I drank something dirty," Ms Abas said.

"I started with vomiting and then diarrhoea and they told me I have cholera, then I came here to the cholera treatment centre."

Ms Abas was lucky to get to the clinic in time as cholera kills quickly if left untreated.

The main symptoms are acute vomiting and diarrhoea, and the body's lack of fluid is what kills.

The 24-hour killer

Patients often have less than 24 hours to seek treatment.

A clinical officer helping to contain the outbreak in Juba, James Jong Nhom, said: "If cholera apparently is not managed properly, you'll not even spend 24 hours (receiving treatment)."

The clinic in Juba has specially designed cholera stretchers that look like a normal camp bed but with a hole in the middle for diarrhoea to pass into a bucket below.

Another clinical officer at the Juba teaching hospital, Wari Evang, says most people in the hospital have a mild condition but those travelling from long distances, "they're the ones coming with severe [cholera]."

"Those who are around the area, the town, they come with mild [cholera]," Mr Evang said.

Volunteers and aid workers have managed to slow down the outbreak in Juba, but the disease is spreading to other parts of South Sudan.

The youngest country on the planet lacks the infrastructure to deal with a widespread epidemic.

It is hard to determine the exact number of people that have been killed by the outbreak as many births and deaths are not registered in Sudan.