Rohingya crisis: WHO dispatches 9,00,00 doses of cholera vaccie in Bangladesh camps
The World Health Organisation (WHO) began distributing 9,00,000 doses of cholera vaccine on Tuesday in Bangladesh’s camps for Rohingya refugees fleeing from Myanmar, as authorities rush to prevent a major outbreak of the deadly disease.
More than 10,000 cases of diarrhoea have been reported in the past week alone, the WHO said.
Doctors in two clinics have told Reuters that there have been several cases of patients with the symptoms of cholera, a virulent diarrhoea that kills within 36 hours if not treated.
Cholera has not been identified in testing of patient samples by Bangladesh’s health ministry, although clinics say they are waiting for results for some samples sent last week.
“There is a clear risk for cholera,” said Dr N. Paranietharan, the WHO’s representative in Bangladesh.
“Sporadic cases are inevitable (but) we are not expecting a major outbreak like Yemen,” he said.
War-torn Yemen is in the grip of a cholera crisis, with more than 750,000 sufferers afflicted by the bacteria, which is spread when contaminated faeces is ingested by humans, usually through the water supply.
The cholera vaccination campaign in Bangladesh, the second largest in history, will be crucial to containing any outbreak, said Paranietharan
More than 1,000 people will fan out across the sprawling …read more
