Lebanon announced today, Thursday, that it had recorded the first case of cholera since 1993.
The case was registered on the fifth of October in the rural Akkar governorate in the north of the country. According to the National News Agency, the cholera patient is receiving treatment and his condition is stable.
For its part, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said that a crisis cell has been formed that includes experts and specialists to respond to the cholera outbreak and follow up on developments on a daily basis.
For his part, Lebanese Health Minister Firas Al-Abyad told Archyde.com that it is highly likely that the cholera case recorded in Akkar, the poorest region of Lebanon, is the result of an outbreak in a Syrian border area.
Cholera usually appears in residential areas that suffer from scarcity of drinking water or lack of sewage systems. It is often caused by eating contaminated food or water, and leads to diarrhea and vomiting.
The announcement of the first infection in Lebanon comes, while at least 39 people died cholera, which is spreading inIn Syria since last month, according to a new report by the Ministry of Health, at a time when the World Health Organization has warned of a “worrying” worsening of the situation.
And the Syrian Ministry of Health reported, last Tuesday, that the cumulative total number of confirmed infections had reached 594distributed over 11 provinces Of the total 14 in the country, the largest number is in Aleppo Governorate (north).
Kits for testing cholera in a camp for displaced people in Idlib
and recorded The ministry has 39 deaths, 34 of them are in Aleppo, explaining that “most of the deaths are caused by the delay in seeking early medical advice or by people suffering from chronic diseases.”
It was not clear whether the ministry’s statistics included injuries and deaths in areas outside the government’s control.
In Geneva, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said during a briefing to reporters Wednesday: “In Syria, more than ten thousand suspected cases of cholera have been reported during the last six weeks.”
And the World Health Organization warned, on Tuesday, that the situation “is worryingly worsening in the governorates” where the disease has spread, and “infections are expanding to new areas.”
