NAIROBI, KENYA: Healthcare providers in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp said an ongoing cholera outbreak is becoming a looming catastrophe.
Doctors Without Borders described the six-month-long cholera outbreak as the worst amid an influx of the latest refugees from Somalia.
According to Voice of America, Médecins Sans Frontiers, famously known as Doctors Without Borders, said on Tuesday that a cholera outbreak in the Dadaab camp is approaching epidemic proportions and that urgent attention to clean water and sanitation is needed. Dr Nitya Udayraj is the medical coordinator.
Dr Nitya Udayraj, MSF’s medical coordinator, said, “The humanitarian situations there are already at their limit. An outbreak like cholera, like measles, is the last stroke that would bring it to the breaking point and which is why today we want to bring focus to the humanitarian condition that is already precarious. … We would like to bring focus to the fact that after six months, the outbreak is continuing. It is not normal.”
The cholera outbreak targeted East Africa’s huge refugee camp last November. At least five people have died since then. The Dadaab complex in Kenya’s northeastern region is home to over 300,000 refugees, most from neighbouring Somalia.
Their numbers exceeded capacity due to the extended drought in Somalia. According to national data, at least 67,000 more refugees arrived in the camp last year, putting pressure on already limited resources. Doctors Without Borders’ country director Hassan Maiyaki said sanitary circumstances are dire.
“Today, according to humanitarian organizations working in the camps, almost half of the camp population has no access to functional latrines, leading to open defecation in and around the camp, which increases the risk of disease outbreaks.”
Health Ministry of Kenya conducted cholera vaccinations at the camp, but the doctors said curbing the outbreak remains elusive without sanitation and hygiene intervention.
