New cholera outbreak in Sudan kills more than 170 people in a week – officials
Medecins Sans Frontieres said the alarming spike began in mid-May.
A new cholera outbreak in Sudan has killed 172 people and made more than 2,500 people unwell over the past week, authorities have said.
The bulk of the cases were reported in the capital Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman, but cholera was also detected in the provinces of North Kordofan, Sennar, Gazira, White Nile and Nile River, health officials said.
Leading medical group Doctors Without Borders — also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF — warned that the country’s existing health facilities were unable to cope with the surge of patients.
According to Joyce Bakker, Sudan co-ordinator for MSF, the alarming spike began in mid-May, with the organisation’s teams treating almost 2,000 suspected cholera cases in the past week alone.
On Saturday, Sudan’s health minister Haitham Ibrahim said the increase in cholera cases just in the Khartoum region had been estimated to average 600 to 700 per week over the past four weeks.
