Number of suspected cholera cases drops in Central Darfur’s Nierteti

Only four new cases were recorded in Nierteti locality over the weekend.

The isolation ward of the Hospital of Nierteti received one new patient on Sunday, a medical volunteer reported to Radio Dabanga.

Six people are currently being treated in the makeshift isolation centre in Kuweila village after two new patients were admitted on Saturday.

The isolation centre of Mara village recorded one new case, bringing the number of cases to seven.

According to cases reported to Radio Dabanga, the death toll in Nierteti this year amounts to at least 24: 18 patients died in February, and six people in this month so far.

‘Watery Diarrhoea’

In spite of numerous independent confirmations (conducted according to World Health Organisation (WHO) standards) that the disease which broke out in Blue Nile State in August 2016 was cholera, the Sudanese authorities and several international organisations still call it ‘Acute Watery Diarrhoea’.

The spread of the infectious disease in Sudan last year turned into epidemic proportions. The WHO and the Sudanese Ministry of Health reported in mid-October that the total number of recorded cases reached more than 35,000 people – including 800 related deaths. Doctors of Sudan’s National Epidemiological Corporation reported in early July however, that nearly 24,000 Sudanese had been infected and 940 cholera patients died.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in January, a slight increase in “acute watery diarrhoea” cases was reported in the country during the last week of 2017 and the first week of this year: 46 and 30 new cases respectively were registered.

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