Lebanese health authorities have confirmed another death from cholera and three other new cases of the disease after the country’s first outbreak in three decades broke out earlier this month.
These figures bring to 16 the total number of deaths and 371 the number of infections since the resurgence of cholera, according to the latest balance sheet of the Ministry of Health collected by ‘L’Orient le Jour’.
Last Thursday, the outgoing Interior Minister, Basam Maulaui, asked the heads of «all districts» of Lebanon to «fully control» the work for the purification of water and «strengthen surveillance» on all water sources in the country.
The minister also recommended to the Crisis Risk Management Directorate, affiliated to his cabinet, to submit a daily report with the data collected by these officials, in order to control the crisis more precisely.
For his part, Health Minister Firas al Abyad assured on Wednesday that the country will receive in the next two weeks some 600,000 doses of a cholera vaccine after receiving the approval of the World Health Organization (WHO).
International organizations have warned that the number of cholera cases in Lebanon and neighboring Syria — which has recorded more than 15,000 cases and 60 deaths, according to a Caritas balance sheet published mid-month — will continue to grow rapidly.
Save the Children, for example, recalled Thursday that cholera cases in Lebanon had nearly doubled in the space of a week.
