More than 1 000 people have died from a cholera outbreak in Angola over the past 11 weeks, with more than 25 000 others ill from the disease, according to the regional office of the World Health Organisation.
The outbreak was detected in the Luanda district of Boa Vista on February 13 and the capital has been the hardest hit by the epidemic with 13 379 cases registered, including 197 deaths.
Ten out of 18 provinces are battling with the epidemic that has left 26 176 people ill and claimed 1 069 lives, according to figures from the WHO released on Thursday.
Cholera, a highly infectious waterborne disease that causes severe diarrhea, is present in large swathes of Angola, whose health-care system is lacking in the wake of a 27-year war that ended in 2002.
In Luanda, the decrepit capital of four million where more than two-thirds of residents live in shantytowns, 13 people died in a single day on Thursday and 467 cases were registered, according to the city’s public-health services.
Tents have been set up in the Boa Vista district, a slum hugging a hillside in Luanda where there is no running water and no sewerage, while putrid water runs through alleyways.
Luanda and far-flung regions of Angola had been free of major epidemics, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres, which notes that the public is ill-informed on how to deal with the health emergency.
The government has set aside $5-million to beef up its response to the health emergency.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s second largest oil producer after Nigeria, Angola is enjoying an economic boom, registering double-digit growth and receiving billions of dollars in revenue from oil. — AFP
