The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that 1, 459 cholera cases, including 31 deaths, had been reported in South Sudan by Saturday.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!“The outbreak is spreading to Yei and Kajo Keji in Central Equatorial State,’’ the UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Monday a daily news briefing.’’
The World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that seven cases had been confirmed in the Juba Protection of Civilians areas as of Sunday, with additional suspected cases under investigation.
Since the outbreak of cholera in Juba in mid-May, the reported cholera caseload has doubled everyday, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said.
After the first case was confirmed in Juba on May 15, more than 130 additional cases were treated, UNICEF said on May 19.
Since January, UNICEF has warned of the threat of cholera, due to the desperate overcrowding of camps following continued violence and now the rainy season.
Last month, UNICEF said that unless nutrition treatment was scaled up immediately, up to 50,000 children under the age of five were likely to die.
In response to the cholera outbreak, UNICEF has helped establish a Cholera Treatment Center (CTC) at the Juba Teaching Hospital.
It also provided life-saving supplies, including medicines, protective gear and equipment and is expanding preventive measures to halt further spread across the country.
However, UNICEF in South Sudan urgently needs 10 million dollars so as to continue current life-saving operations and increase its cholera prevention work.
On the Protection of Civilians sites, OCHA said that the relocation of 13,500 internally displaced persons was expected to start on June 16.
In Malakal, Upper Nile State, the UN secretary-general’s special representative for South Sudan, Hilde F. Johnson, on Monday inaugurated a new protection-of-civilians site, Dujarric said.
“The new facility can accommodate between 8,000 and 9,000 internally displaced persons.
“The relocations have already started in Malakal. As of June 7, some 3,100 had moved to the new site,’’ he said. (Xinhua/Naija247news)