WHO worries about “very high risk of spread” of cholera in Lebanon

The negative consequences of the war in the Middle East on public health are beginning to be felt. The WHO thus sounded the alarm 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,” said Abdinasir Abubakar, the head of the World Health Organization in Lebanon during a press briefing by the WHO in Geneva.

A patient arrived at the hospital on Monday

These displaced people come from certain communities in the South and Beirut which “have not been immunized against cholera over the last 30 years, and the risk of spread is very high,” warned this official.

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 “did not travel” and comes from a village in the Akkar governorate, in the far north of Lebanon. This is a Lebanese woman who went to the hospital on Monday “due to severe watery diarrhea and dehydration”.

A bacteria that can kill in a few hours

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.

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Dr. Abubakar further stressed that the economic crisis that Lebanon has been going through 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. But the patient did not come from one of these areas.