(Corrects the number of fatalities in the third paragraph to 1 from three)
DAKAR (AlertNet) - Governments in West Africa need to be better prepared for the rapid onset of cholera, dengue and yellow fever during the rainy season to be able to treat those infected and prevent the further spread of the highly contagious diseases, aid agencies say.
Outbreaks of cholera have been reported in Nigeria, Benin, Ivory Coast, Niger, Liberia, Cameroon and Chad. The disease, generally spread through contaminated food and water, has killed about 100 people in Cameroon, according to the country's officials.
Health officials in Ivory Coast say at least 10 people have been infected by dengue fever and one person has died from the illness, which is transmitted by the bite of infected female aedes mosquitoes and is deadly once it develops to haemorrhagic fever.
They have also reported nine yellow fever infections and two deaths from the disease, which has no cure and can only be prevented by vaccination.
"The rains cause floods, mudslides, pools of stagnant water, flushing out of latrines which contaminate drinking water sources or serve as habitat for vectors of these deadly diseases," said Francois Bellet, the regional water, hygiene and sanitation specialist for the U.N. children's fund (UNICEF).
"There is a need for strategic plans with emergency response teams and supplies targeting places where such epidemics have been recurrent to react speedily and prevent further propagation," he told AlertNet.
This is often difficult to achieve in a region that includes 11 of the bottom 20 countries in the U.N. human development index, suffering high levels of poverty, insufficient supplies of potable water and inadequate health facilities.
Moreover, governments, donors and aid agencies in the region must also focus on long-term development to improve basic public services, experts say.
"We need to improve water supply and hygiene and sanitation facilities, as well as behaviours," said Angelica Fleischer, regional adviser on water, sanitation and hygiene for UK-based charity Oxfam.
Badly maintained roads and bridges make some places inaccessible during the rainy season. One such area in Cameroon bordering Nigeria and Chad has been hit by a cholera epidemic but lacks health services and locally-based aid groups to be able to deal with the crisis on its own, according to UNICEF.
"What is disturbing is that in this area, which is a sort of no-man's land, the real number of cases could be 10 or more times higher than the number of declared cases," Bellet said. Since in half of cholera cases no symptoms are apparent in the first 10 days, infected people can move across borders or from town to town leading to bigger epidemics, he added.
Aid groups are also worried about such epidemics in countries with food shortages following government and UNICEF reports that cholera has killed 12 and infected more than 200 people in Diffa, one of Niger's regions worst-hit by the nation's food crisis.
"Malnourished people are more vulnerable to cholera because they have a lower immunity and it's harder for them to recover because they do not have enough reserves to deal with the situation," Oxfam's Fleischer said.
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