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Geneva: A cholera outbreak in Kenya has killed 67 people so far this year, while a fungus has wiped out up to 20 per cent of the country's annual rice production, World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva said yesterday.
Nearly 1,300 cases of cholera, a virulent water-borne disease, have been reported in the east African country since January.
More than half are in western Nyanza province along Lake Victoria which has also had the most deaths, while an outbreak in the east near the border with Somalia has abated, the WHO said.
"The number of new cases each week is dropping, which is rather reassuring," WHO's global cholera coordinator Claire-Lise Chaignat said.
Health ministry and WHO officials have supplied chlorine to treat water supplies and are assessing hospital needs. Cholera begins with acute watery diarrhoea that in severe cases can cause death by dehydration within hours.
"This comes amid a humanitarian situation which remains very worrying in Kenya," Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs, told a news briefing.
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