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Hospital alert as cholera toll climbs to 81
Cholera patients admitted at the Coast Provincial General Hospital in Mombasa receive treatment on Thursday.
Photo/ GIDEON MAUNDU
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Doctors declare alert, sending team to Coast as disease claims seven lives
Seven people have died in a cholera outbreak at the Coast Province and nine are ill in hospital, according to medical authorities.
Coast Provincial Medical boss Maurice Simunyu said, in total, 21 people are confirmed infected, nine of whom are being treated in an isolation ward at the Coast Provincial General Hospital.
The medical boss said two patients have died at Coast General and two at the Malindi District Hospital. He did not give the circumstances of the other three deaths. This brings to 81 the national cholera death toll this year, 30 of them in the past month alone.
Highly contagious
The highly contagious disease, which is passed on by eating contaminated food or drinking dirty water, is now in Nairobi, Suba, Laisamis, Garbatulla and Moyale districts. Cases are distributed throughout the country, though the Coast outbreak appears severe.
“Two of those who died in Mombasa came from the Kongowea area of Kisauni constituency,” Dr Simunyu said, adding that doctors were on high alert and that a medical team had been sent to that particular area to prevent the disease from spreading.
Coast Provincial General Hospital chief administrator, Dr Heltan Maganga, said the first patient was diagnosed on June 1 and died the following day. “Since then, we can confirm 21 cases, out of which nine are undergoing treatment,” he said.
“A team of public health officers has been dispatched to the hard-hit villages of Kisauni, Kongowea, Bombolulu, Maweni and Mishomoroni, where we want to create awareness of proper sanitation practices,” he said.
The hospital chief physician, Dr Misfr Swaleh, urged those suffering from any kind of diarrhoea to take a lot of fluids to avoid dehydration. Of those admitted, Dr Swaleh said, 11 were adults and 10 children, among them 12-year-old Caroline Ochieng’, a Standard Four pupil at Kongowea Primary School.
She was admitted on Sunday suffering from acute diarrhoea and vomiting. In other parts of the country, the Red Cross reported 25 new cases in Laisamis District, with six admitted to various hospitals in that area. In Merille, four new cases were diagnosed and three patients admitted. In total, 35 cholera patients — 22 children and 13 adults — are admitted to Laisamis District Hospital.
Additional reporting by Mike Mwaniki
