Flood victims at risk—MSF
An estimated 140 000 Malawians affected by the floods remain in need of medical services in the hard-to-reach Nsanje and East Bank areas, with cholera representing the most immediate threat, the medical humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has said.
Currently, MSF is the only medical humanitarian actor responding in this most affected district in support of the Ministry of Health teams.
When MSF toured the areas on Tuesday last week, 20 cholera cases, one of them fatal, had been reported in Mbenje, Lulwe, Nkhande and Ndamera, in the southern part of the district. MSF has supported the Ministry of Health in setting up small cholera units in locations providing, among others, oral rehydration salts, tents, chlorine, soap and boots.
Neighbouring Mozambique has already recorded 2 400 cholera cases, including 28 deaths, spread across three provinces, including Tete province which borders Malawi. In Tete and Moatize, MSF has set up and co-manages with the Mozambican Ministry of Health two treatment centres that currently treat over 100 patients per day.
“Most of the patients admitted with suspected cases of cholera in Malawi say they came from Mutarara, a district in neighbouring Mozambique with high informal mining activities. They say that minors there started developing symptoms and died, prompting the others to flee to their place of origin. This creates potentially a multitude of sites where cases could be identified,” says AmauryGrégoire, MSF’s head of mission in Malawi.
MSF has a stock of cholera kits for 2 000 patients in Malawi, and is prepared to support the set-up and running of a larger cholera treatment centre if need be.
The organisation is prepared for potential epidemics such as measles as well as a scenario of high levels of malaria. While no measles outbreak has been reported yet, one rubella case has been confirmed and the risk of measles epidemic remains high. MSF therefore encourages and supports districts and World Health Organisation (WHO) in considering vaccination that could prevent disease and deaths in the coming weeks if carried out quickly and adequately.
Since January 18 medical teams co-managed by MSF and the Ministry of Health have provided 14 457 consultations, a third of them for children under the age of five. Half of these consultations account for three main pathologies: 28 per cent are respiratory tract infection, 13 per cent for diarrhoea and 15 per cent malaria, a percentage in line with the normal rate at this season in southern Malawi.
