The cholera epidemic in Mayotte, a French department in the Indian Ocean neighboring the Comoros, has so far affected 65 people, including a three-year-old girl who died on Wednesday, the Minister of Health announced on Friday.
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There is “for the moment only one outbreak”, declared Frédéric Valletoux on RTL radio, while noting a “slow rise in the level of people affected”.
The epidemic “is under control” and “circumscribed”, thanks to “intervention by health services on vaccination, treatment, support for those affected”, specified the minister while traveling on the island.
The epidemic started “on March 18,” he recalled, with the first cases “arriving from the Comoros,” where the epidemic is surging and has already caused 98 deaths, according to the latest official report.
“The vaccination strategy for cholera is not to vaccinate all-out and blindly”, but “in stages”, with vaccination of those close to those affected and people who have been in contact with them in the last 48 hours, explained the minister.
In Mayotte, more than 3,700 people have been vaccinated so far in the epidemic outbreak alone, he said. “We have some stocks. Today there are approximately 7,000 vaccines on the island. 6000 vaccines arriving next week. We still have possible doses and in larger volumes for the start of summer.”
Furthermore, while cholera is transmitted in particular via water contaminated by the bacteria, “the State will continue to distribute water as much as necessary” and “water ramps have been installed in certain neighborhoods”, specified Frédéric Valletoux.
Coming from mainland France, 86 reservists, nurses and doctors arrived on the ground, he added.
Mr. Valletoux recognized the difficulties facing the health system and caregivers on the island, which has only one hospital and five emergency doctors, for some 310,000 inhabitants according to official population figures, probably largely under-reported. estimated.
“The teams here are suffering because they have been constantly subjected to extremely tense rhythms for a long time,” he noted.
“Work” to extend and modernize the hospital, for 242 million euros, “will start in a few weeks”, he said, to which is added the commitment of the public authorities “to build a second hospital in another part of the island.
