OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Thursday
THE cholera epidemic gripping South Africa has killed three more people over the past 24 hours in KwaZulu-Natal, bringing the total number of deaths since August to 82.
More than 1_000 new infections were reported on Monday this week, bringing the number of cases since the outbreak of the disease in August to 32_742, according to the provincial health department. This compares to between 20 and 50 new cases a day last year.
The number of new infections has doubled over the past few days but the department said it had intensified its education campaign to try to contain the spread of the disease.
“The large increase in daily infections is of great concern to the department of health but is not entirely unexpected as this is the time of year when cholera cases peak,” it said.
However, health workers disagreed, saying there is no end in sight to the epidemic.
“We have been expecting the worst and it seems to be happening,” said the spokesman for South Africa’s Cholera Control Centre, David McGlew. “It is very unlikely that this is going to go away. It can take a long time to wipe out.”
McGlew said infections have increased for two reasons – the return to the province of migrant workers for the holidays and the fact that February and March are the months when the risk of cholera is highest.
He said the vast majority of the victims were poor people living in rural areas that lacked access to tap water but instead relied on now contaminated streams and rivers.
Attempts to curb the epidemic by sending in emergency water supplies and teaching communities to purify water were fraught with difficulty because the cholera-struck areas were large and often remote, he added.
In addition communities were sometimes superstitious about adding bleach to their water supply.
Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi has warned that cholera could turn into a “national disaster” and has given experts from the water and health departments until February 9 to produce a strategy to combat the epidemic. – Reuters/AFP
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