Cholera Kills 4 in Ghana and Surges in Cameroon Killing over 75 and infecting some 1,400

The Acting Director of Medical Affairs of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, David Nortey, has described the Cholera outbreak in the country as alarming.
He said four people have died of the disease at Korle- Bu Polyclinic alone and more cases continue to be reported.
Dr Nortey said this when he briefed the Minister of Health on his maiden tour of sectors under his ministry. He said it is a shame that cholera should be a health issue in Ghana in this 21st Century.
Meanwhile, in Yaounde, Cameroon, rains and insecurity caused by Nigerian Islamist militants are aggravating a cholera outbreak in northern Cameroon which has killed at least 75 people and infected some 1,400 others since April.
Water scarcity, poor public health care and risky hygienic practices have rekindled the disease which badly hit the country between 2009 and 2011, experts say.
Population movement during the current school holidays could help spread infections to other regions of Cameroon or even to neighbouring countries, said Félicité Tchibindat, a UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative in Cameroon.
The first cholera case was in a Nigerian family who were among a group of refugees fleeing to Cameroon from bombings and attacks by Nigeria’s Boko Haram extremist militia in April. Scarcity of safe drinking water, open defecation and other poor hygienic habits have exacerbated the cholera cases in northern Cameroon, Tchibindat said.
More than 26,000 cholera cases have been reported in Nigeria since the start of the year, according to health authorities.
“For the moment we are supporting health workers, conducting community sensitization, supplied water and cholera treatment kits. But given the insecurity, whether the community mobilizers can visit all the villages is a question we are still asking ourselves,”
Cameroon’s Far North, North, Adamaoua and East regions suffer chronic shortages of health workers. Nationally, there are 1.43 healthcare personnel per 1,000 people. In the Far North Region, for instance, the ratio is 0.47 doctors for 1,000 people. Most of the staff deployed to the remote regions “feel that it is a punishment”, the UNICEF representative said.