Doctors issue red alert over looming cholera, measles crisis, urge mass vaccination
Officials in the country and the United Nations Refugee Agency have been urged to start a vaccination campaign in the Dadaab refugee camp to control the looming cholera and measles outbreak.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Doctors without borders also urged the authorities to increase humanitarian support on account of the increment of refugees fleeing Somalia into the northern side of the country due to the drought situation.
MSF’s deputy programme manager for Kenya, Adrian Guadarrama warned that with low vaccination coverage in Somalia and no system in place to receive and screen people arriving in the country, infectious diseases can spread quickly, placing people living in and around the camps at a high risk of infection.
“With hundreds of people of Somalia arriving each week in Kenya’s Daadab refugee complex, the living conditions in the cramps hosting over 233,000 refugees and thousands of new arrivals since January are worsening,” he said.
“Even a few isolated cases of measles and cholera can cause a full blown outbreak in overcrowded camp settings, where clean drinking water is scarce and poor sanitation and hygiene are poor,” he added.
The Ministry of Health in the country had issued a red alert of the Cholera outbreak after 15 people were rushed to the hospital depicting symptoms of cholera after having consumed food at a wedding in Limuru.
The food eaten at the event was suspected to have been ferried from Nairobi to the wedding venue by a catering company.
Symptoms in the early stages of infection include profuse watery diarrhea, vomiting, rapid heart rate, loss of skin elasticity, dry mucous membranes, low blood pressure, thirst, muscle cramps and restlessness or irritability.
The ministry also warned that Cholera is an extremely virulent disease and affects both children and adults and can kill within hours.
