Via IRIN Africa: DRC considers cholera vaccination. Excerpt:
Health experts, including those from the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF), are considering introducing immunization campaigns as a way of dealing with cholera in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the disease is endemic.
“Immunization against cholera opens up a new opportunity [for] treatment and [the] fight against the disease. We think that there is a new opportunity to use it in the DR Congo as a complementary measure to existing methods that that have been used in the past,” Marc le Pape, chief of the MSF bureau in the eastern town of Kalemei, told IRIN.
The parts of DRC most affected by the disease are characterized by poor hygiene, lack of awareness about how cholera is transmitted, limited access to protected and monitored water sources, and lack of sanitation infrastructure.
According to a cholera situation analysis released by WHO in September 2012, there were 22,792 reported cases of cholera in DRC between January and September 2012. There were 512 cholera-related deaths in the same period.
