Cholera cases rise to 124
Ministry of Health (MoH) says cholera cases in Machinga and Zomba, two Eastern Region districts where an outbreak was reported on Boxing Day, have risen to 124.
MoH director of preventive health services Storn Kabuluzi, speaking in a telephone interview, said 95 cases have been registered in Machinga and 29 in Zomba.
He said the death toll stood at four as of Thursday and all the deaths occurred in Machinga soon after the outbreak was reported.
But MoH expressed hope that the outbreak will be contained and will not spread to other districts as response efforts have been stepped up, including increased awareness on preventive measures in affected communities.
The ministry has also established cholera treatment centres where people affected are being treated.
Kabuluzi said as of Monday, Machinga had three treatment centres while Zomba had one.
He said the ministry hopes that people will utilise the centres by swiftly taking to the centres those who show signs of the disease.
He said: “We are encouraging the communities to take whoever they are suspecting that they might have cholera—if they have diarrhoea or vomiting— to the treatment centres on time.”
Kabuluzi said in awareness messages, people need to know that there is a cholera outbreak in Machinga and Zomba and it can be prevented if basic hygiene practices are followed properly.
“As a ministry, what we are doing is to send awareness messages to the affected people so that the outbreak is contained and does not spread to other parts of the country and we just ask the media to join us in sending the right messages to the community in order to achieve this together,” he said.
He added that the basic message people should know is that one can get cholera by either drinking water or eating food that is contaminated with cholera and basically the preventive measures are to drink or use safe clean water.
Kabuluzi said water can be made clean in two ways, either by using chlorine (such as Water-guard) or boiling the water.
He said: “But the best way is to use chlorine because if you change the water from one container to another, it can still not get contaminated. The ministry is distributing this chlorine to the communities using health surveillance assistants [HSAs] and we are encouraging the communities to use this chlorine to make their drinking water safe.”
About the cholera outbreaks that were looming in Karonga and Mwanza early this month, Kabuluzi said the ministry is doing very well that part. He also said he has heard of unconfirmed reports of cholera outbreaks in Tanzania and Mozambique but what is important for Malawi is to treat on time the cholera cases present and ensure that preventive measures are spread to the community.
“The good thing is that we work nicely together with our neighbours and we share data. We also have got partners who are helping us in curbing cholera such as the WHO, Unicef and Médecins Sans Frontières,” said Kabuluzi.
For many decades, Malawi has been struggling with cholera —both in its prevention as well as treatment. The country registered the highest cholera cases in 2008/2009 where 3 250 cases and 82 deaths were recorded. Since then the trend has been declining.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), cholera can kill healthy adults within hours and individuals with lower immunity are at greater risk of death if infected by cholera.
