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Cholera Outbreak In Nigeria Claims At Least 71 Lives

By Kamal Nayan | Update Date: Jan 11, 2014 05:31 PM EST

At least 71 people have died as a result of cholera outbreak in Nigeria’s Kano state, according to an official.

Abdulsalam Nasidi, project director of Nigeria’s Centre for Disease Control, said by far more than two thousands cases had beed recorded in the affected areas in the past 60 days.

“The first cases reported on 6th November 6, 2013 with 22 local government affected,344 wards were affected while 713 settlement ravaged by the diseases and a total number of 71 deaths recorded from 17 local government area which represented 3.3 percent case fatality rate," Nasidi said according to ThisDayLive.com.

According to him, the majority of the affected persons are from the metropolitan local government. He also assured that the teams of professional health experts have been deployed to tackle the outbreak.

“Cholera epidemic has been in the country since September last year , though at the initial stage Kano was not affected , this can best be attributed to the effort of the government in informing the general public on the need to take adequate care of their health as well as necessary logistic provided by the government”, said State commissioner of Health, Dr. Abubakar Labaran Yusuf, according to ThisDayLive.com.

Cholera is mainly caused by the filth and dirt water. According to figures by United Nations, half of Nigeria’s more than 160 million people still have no access to safe water and a third are yet to use proper toilets.

Meanwhile, reports are that Northern Zamfara state has also recorded hundreds of cholera cases lately.

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