The WHO warned on Wednesday “against the very high risk of spread” of cholera in Lebanon after the discovery of a first confirmed case in the north of the country.
“What worries us is that people displaced by the current conflict have reached the north,” Abdinasir Abubakar, the head of the World Health Organization in Lebanon, said at a press briefing. WHO in Geneva.
These displaced people come from some communities in the south and Beirut which “have not been immunized against cholera over the past 30 years, and the risk of spread is very high”, the official warned.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health confirmed earlier in the day that a woman was indeed a victim of cholera bacteria in the north of the country.
The patient “has not traveled” and comes from a village in the Akkar governorate, in the far north of Lebanon, the ministry specifies.
This is a Lebanese woman who went to the hospital on Monday “due to severe watery diarrhea and dehydration”.
Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacillus Vibrio cholerae.
Diarrhea and severe dehydration caused by the bacillus can kill within hours.
Dr. Abubakar stressed that the economic crisis that Lebanon has been experiencing for years and its severe impact on public water and electricity services have pushed the WHO and the authorities to organize preventive vaccinations against cholera in the areas most at risk.
The patient did not come from one of these areas, the WHO official clarified.
After nearly a year of border firefights with Hezbollah and after weakening Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army moved the front of the war to Lebanon in mid-September.
Since September 23, at least 1,356 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP count based on official figures. The UN has recorded nearly 700,000 displaced people.
Israel says it wants to move Hezbollah away from the border and put an end to its rocket fire, in order to allow the return to northern Israel of some 60,000 inhabitants displaced by the fire of the Lebanese armed movement.
“What worries us is that people displaced by the current conflict have reached the north,” said Abdinasir Abubakar, the head of the World…
