A cholera outbreak has spread in Sudan, health officials said Sunday, killing nearly two dozen people and sickening hundreds in recent weeks as the African country grapples with a 16-month conflict and devastating floods.
At least 22 people have died from the disease, and at least 354 confirmed cases of cholera have been reported across the county in recent weeks, Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim said in a statement.
Ibrahim did not give a timeline for the deaths or a number since the beginning of the year. However, the World Health Organization said it had recorded 78 deaths from cholera in Sudan as of July 28 this year. It said the disease sickened more than 2,400 people between January 1 and July 28.
According to WHO, cholera is a fast-moving, highly contagious infection that causes diarrhoea, leading to severe dehydration and potentially death within a few hours if untreated. It is spread by consuming contaminated food or water.
The cholera outbreak is the latest disaster for Sudan, which was plunged into chaos in April last year when escalating tensions between the army and a powerful paramilitary group spiraled into open warfare across the country.
The conflict has turned the capital Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields, destroying civilian infrastructure and an already poor healthcare system. Without infrastructure, many hospitals and medical facilities have closed their doors.
It has killed thousands and pushed many more to starvation, with famine confirmed in a huge camp for displaced people in the devastated northern region of Darfur.
Sudan’s conflict has created the world’s largest displacement crisis. According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 10.7 million people have been forced to flee their homes since the fighting began. More than 2 million of these have fled to neighboring countries.
The fighting has involved widespread rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to the United Nations and international rights groups.
Devastating seasonal flooding in recent weeks has added to the misery. Dozens of people have been killed and vital infrastructure has been washed away in 12 of Sudan’s 18 provinces, according to local officials. The floods have displaced about 118,000 people, according to the UN migration agency.
Cholera is not uncommon in Sudan. The last major outbreak in 2017 killed at least 700 people and sickened nearly 22,000 in less than two months.
World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said the outbreak began in the eastern province of Kasala and then spread to nine localities in five provinces.
In a statement to The Associated Press, he said data shows the vast majority of cases detected were unvaccinated. He said the WHO is now working with Sudanese health authorities and partners to implement a vaccination campaign.
Meanwhile, Sudan’s military-controlled Sovereign Council said on Sunday it would send a government delegation to meet US officials in Cairo, as America increases pressure on the military to join peace talks underway in Switzerland aimed at finding a way out of the conflict.
The Cairo meeting will focus on the implementation of an agreement between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, which requires the paramilitary group to evict people from their homes in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country, the council said in a statement.
The talks began in Switzerland on August 14, attended by diplomats from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the African Union and the United Nations. An RSF delegation was in Geneva but did not attend the meetings.