Lebanon identifies about twenty cholera cases in less than a week

Oct. 11 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Lebanese authorities have identified 18 cases of cholera in the last week, in the first recorded outbreak in the country for three decades.

A spokesman for the Lebanese Ministry of Health has announced that four cases of cholera have been reported this Monday in the town of Arsal, in the Beca district, in the east of the country. These latest cases are added to a total of fourteen other cases identified in the previous days in the northern district of Akkar, according to the newspaper ‘L’Orient Le Jour’.

Five people are hospitalized in serious condition, while eight patients have mild symptoms and another five are asymptomatic. The death of a minor as a result of acute diarrhea is also under investigation.

Faced with the increase in cases, hospitals in the north of the eastern country have put their medical personnel on alert, while they have begun to stockpile remedies to fight the disease, reports Radio France International station.

The Lebanese Health Minister, Firas Abiad, criticized this Sunday the “regression in basic services” in terms of health, in the context of the recent cholera outbreak.

“We have seen a drop in basic services, whether for the Lebanese people or for the refugees. This setback is reaching a level that exposes Lebanon to epidemics that it has not seen in a long time,” Abiad said in statements collected by ‘L ‘Orient Le Jour’.

Precisely this Thursday the WHO warned of the resurgence of cholera at a global level, attributing it in part to climate change. In the first nine months of the year, 27 countries have reported outbreaks of this disease, which has also caused all the alarms to go off in Haiti.

Cholera is an acute diarrheal disease caused by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the ‘vibrio cholerae bacillus’, according to the WHO on its website, where it stresses that “cholera continues to be a global threat to public health and a indicator of inequity and lack of social development”.