Zambian schools closed as cholera kills 61

LUSAKA — The start of Zambia’s school year has been postponed and all public gatherings banned to contain a cholera outbreak that has killed 61 people, officials said yesterday.

Church services were cancelled on Sunday and a night-time curfew has been imposed to limit movement in Lusaka’s densely-populated slum district of Kanyama, one of the worst affected areas.

Street vending has also been outlawed and nightclub hours reduced, while the army has been patrolling the streets for the last 10 days to ensure compliance with the tightening restrictions.

“The country has recorded 114 new cases in the last 24 hours bringing the total to 2 672 since the disease broke out. The cumulative death toll is 61,” Health Minister Chitalu Chilufya told journalists yesterday. The current outbreak began in late September. The school year was due to start on Monday and no date has been set for term to begin.

Cholera is a water-borne diarrhoeal disease that can kill within hours if left untreated, but is easily cured with oral rehydration, intravenous fluids and antibiotics. Clean water and sanitation are critical to controlling transmission.

President Edgar Lungu has said he was “deeply concerned” at the spread of the disease, blaming water from shallow wells, unsanitary conditions in residential and public areas and contaminated food.

On December 30, he ordered the military to assist efforts to control the disease.

Meanwhile, Democratic Republic of Congo started two days of national mourning on Monday for 48 people killed by floods and mudslides in the capital Kinshasa amid concerns of a cholera outbreak in the vast city of 10 million.

The mid-week fatalities following torrential rain wreaked havoc on flimsy homes which were flattened by mudslides.

“I am here to survey the damage first-hand,” said Prime Minister Bruno Tshibala, visiting the workingclass districts of Bandal and Kitambo of the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo.

He met a widow in her fifties who lost five children in the floods. She wasn’t home at the time and her sixth child - a 14-year-old girl - was rescued by her neighbour John Bompengo, a photographer.

“Around two in the morning on Thursday I was woken by a deafening sound. We ran. We climbed the roof... and we pulled out the young girl who cried immediately ‘My brothers are already dead’,” he said.— AFP.