OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Wednesday
AS holidaymakers and migrant workers start leaving KwaZulu-Natal at the end of the holiday season health authorities fear the spread of the cholera epidemic which has claimed 53 lives in the province.
The pandemic which broke out in northern KwaZulu-Natal five months ago, has infected 12 715 people.
Fears about cholera spreading to other provinces were voiced in Durban on Tuesday, at a high-level government meeting to intensify the campaign against cholera.
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said the province and the country were facing a crisis and there was a need for an urgent strategy to prevent the spread of cholera to other provinces.
At least three provinces have been placed on cholera alert and the remainder will implement surveillance programmes as a pro-active measure to prevent the spread of the highly infectious disease.
The meeting also heard evidence from a microbiology expert that the cholera bacteria can lie dormant in estuaries for up to 10 years before being triggered into a human outbreak after heavy rains.
According to Professor Willem Sturm from the microbiology department at the University of Natal, the number of people carrying the disease could be much higher than the number of cases actually reported.
Tshabalala-Msimang this week also requested further assistance from the World Health Organisation to assist the country in dealing with the crisis.
Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Ronnie Kasrils said his department had budgeted extensively for the province over the next few years to provide safe water to poor rural communities.
The task team will report back on Friday on the amount of resources, financial and otherwise, available to fight the pandemic.
The disease broke out in the lower Umfolozi districts in northern KwaZulu-Natal in mid-August and has spread to include the south coastal regions of Port Shepstone.
In the meantime, almost all of the R11.8m made available to fight the disease and provide clean water and medical assistance to the affected communities had been used.
Welile Shasha, a representative of the World Health Organisation, has offered to bring international cholera experts to KwaZulu-Natal to assist local health authorities.
Professor Sturm said he believed that the outbreaks would continue to occur and the only way to combat an epidemic was to educate communities throughout the province, not just people in the worst affected areas.