Capital city records over 250 cholera deaths in just two months, after rainy season arrives early again
YAOUNDE (AlertNet) - An unprecedented cholera outbreak is spreading fast through Cameroon’s capital, after an early start to the rainy season, causing more than 250 deaths in two months alone, according to the government.
Abnormal rainfall has triggered floods in Yaounde, contaminating drinking water from dug wells, especially in slum areas, council authorities say.
“Heavy rains that started very unusually in February this year have caused floods in some quarters like Biyemassi, Mendong, Carriere and Obili, where many cases of the cholera epidemic have been reported,” said Ntsimi Evouna, government delegate to Yaounde city council. He cautioned the population to stay away from the affected neighbourhoods.
The west-central African nation has two main seasons: a dry season from October to April and a rainy season from May to September.
Rene Amogou of the ministry of environment and nature protection said Cameroon does not normally experience rains in February, particularly in Yaounde. But the rains also arrived early last year and were heavier than usual throughout the rainy season, bringing floods, landslides and a jump in cholera cases, especially in the north later in the year.
“This can only be attributed to climate change and will certainly affect the meteorological data we have had over the years,” Amogou explained.
The average annual rainfall in coastal areas is 4,060mm, while in semi-arid northern regions, it is 380mm. But the figures are likely to be higher this year, Amogou noted.
Cameroonians should be aware of these climate anomalies and their impacts, including floods, and take measures to adapt to shifting weather patterns, he said.
Diplomatic missions in Yaounde have also warned their citizens, especially those arriving for the first time, to avoid flooded and cholera-infected zones. They have been advised not to drink water from dubious sources nor eat fruit from roadside vendors, which may have been washed in contaminated water.
The city council, working in tandem with the health ministry, has been spraying anti- bacterial solution in inundated districts. Floods have turned the pit toilets and garbage heaps common in the city’s poorer neighbourhoods into ponds of raw sewage, which is seeping into nearby wells, infecting the main source of drinking water, health officials say.
The council has also banned the sale of bottled drinking water on the streets, a trade that has become popular among the growing ranks of unemployed youths.
TREATMENT AND CONTROL CENTRES
Cameroon’s public health minister, Andre Mama Fouda, recently inaugurated a cholera coordination and control centre at the Mfoundi medical unit in Yaounde, codenamed C4. It offers free treatment, and is the country’s second such facility. The first was opened in Maroua in the Far North in October.
Cholera is spread via the oral-fecal route, through water contaminated with human excreta. Dr Emmanuel Ngapana of the Mfoundi centre said water could be made safe for drinking by boiling or treating it with chlorine or filtration to remove the contaminant.
Untreated water kills within hours, he cautioned. “If you don’t get the lost fluid through incessant vomiting and watery stools replaced through rapid hydration, you can go into shock and die as a result,” he said, citing a WHO statistic that more than 120,000 people die of cholera each year worldwide.
The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is helping the Cameroon government and the population by providing emergency medical kits containing surgical gloves, water treatment tablets, cholera medicine, oral rehydration salts and public education materials. The U.N. agency is concerned about the impact on children, who are particularly at risk from the killer disease.
At the University Reference Hospital (CHU) in Yaounde, patients, including children, lie contorted in agony on mattresses fouled with diarrhoea brought on by cholera.
“Children and mothers are the most vulnerable group and we have been receiving them here by the day since we opened this treatment centre on March 31,” said Gaelle Faure, head of the Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) mission in Yaounde, which is working alongside the government to contain the disease.
According to the international medical aid group, the makeshift unit has treated some 158 cases since April 10. It is also providing hygiene management services, including sensitising people to the importance of adequate sanitation.
REGIONAL PROBLEM
The cholera problem is not limited to Cameroon. Since September, cases have occurred in other parts of Central and West Africa, including Chad, Niger and Nigeria, according to a report from the World Health Organization (WHO). The affected area is home to some 5 million people.
In Northern Nigeria and southern Niger, more than 260 deaths and over 3,300 cases have been registered. In Cameroon, 6,199 cholera cases have been recorded in the Far North and 410 people have died, the WHO said.
Around 70 percent of inhabitants in Cameroon’s Far North and border towns in Nigeria, Chad and Central African Republic have no access to potable water, according to the report.
Many also live far from medical facilities that could save their lives by helping them rehydrate and replacing the sodium and potassium lost in diarrhoea and vomit.
In a 2009 report, the WHO said it was concerned about the link between climate change - which is predicted to bring more extreme weather - and an increase in the incidence of diarrhoeal diseases. Environmental factors contribute to around 94 percent of the 4 billion cases of diarrhoea the agency estimates occur globally each year.
DIRTY WELLS
A study carried out by the Centre Pasteur, a Cameroonian medical laboratory, on some 50 dug wells in the cities of Douala and Yaounde showed that 100 percent of water from these wells was contaminated by faecal pollution.
In response to this alarming situation, the public health minister and the secondary education minister recently announced that the government is working with development partners to build modern toilets and provide public taps in some districts vulnerable to cholera outbreaks.
Aid group Plan International is helping install latrines in schools, and providing hygiene training for teachers to curb the spread of the disease now and in the longer term.
The public health minister said access to potable water is inadequate in Yaounde, with only around 65,000 of more than 2 million inhabitants able to use a public water facility. To remedy this, the government has decided to provide public taps in every neighbourhood of the city by next year.
Elias Ntungwe Ngalame is an award-winning environmental writer with Cameroon's Eden Group of newspapers.
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