Worst cholera outbreak in decades kills hundreds in Malawi

A devastating outbreak of cholera has now claimed 750 lives in Malawi according to a government minister said, with the World Health Organization chief describing the southeast African country as among the hardest hit amid ongoing global epidemics that are “more widespread and deadly than normal”.

As the Associated Press reported, Malawi’s Health Minister Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda ordered the closure of many businesses that lack safe water, toilets and hygienic refuse disposal facilities last week, and announced restrictions on the sale of pre-cooked food.

“We continue to record rising number of cases across the country, despite signs of reduced transmission and deaths in a few areas”, Chiponda said in a statement, and urged adherence to sanitation and hygiene measures.

Chiponda said 17 people had died from 589 new cases of the waterborne disease only in the past 24 hours, with a total of 22,759 cases since the onset of the outbreak in March last year, which is described as the word that has affected the country in the last two decades.