200 dead in 10 months after resurgence of cholera in Cameroon

A resurgence of cholera has killed 200 people since October 2021 in Cameroon, where more than 10,300 cases of the disease have been reported, the health minister said on Thursday (August 4).

Cholera, an acute diarrhoeal disease that can kill within hours if left untreated, periodically appears in Cameroon, a central African country with a population of more than 25 million. 

Since the start of the cholera epidemic in late October 2021, 200 people have died out of a total of 10,322 cases, Cameroon's health minister, Manaouda Malachie, announced in a tweet.

Five of Cameroon's ten regions, including the Littoral, which includes the economic capital Douala, and the Centre region, which includes the capital Yaoundé, are affected by the epidemic, according to the health minister. 

"Beware!!! Let us observe hygiene measures," Malachie urged.

The previous outbreak of cholera killed 66 people in Cameroon between January and August 2020. 

In early 2021, the WHO estimated that there were 1.3 to 4 million cases of cholera and 21,000 to 143,000 deaths from the disease worldwide each year.