When cholera was nipped in the bud

 It all started in March 2022 when cholera cases were reported in Machinga and Nsanje districts.

At the time, it seemed as if it was one of those isolated cases. The public was less worried.

But gradually, the cases multiplied and the situation transitioned into an outbreak.

Controlling the outbreak was a tall order for the country amid a struggling health sector grappling with a high unemployment rate and lack of adequate funding.

People wept as the diseases took a toll, killing people on a daily basis while hundreds of others got affected.

By the time we entered 2023, it had been declared a public health emergency by President Lazarus Chakwera.

The President made this declaration on December 8 2022. This signalled how dire the situation was.

Now as we began the first quarter of 2023, the World Health Organisation (WHO) indicated that the most affected age groups were those between 21 and 30.

In this first quarter, a WHO and African Union Centre for Disease Control scoping mission also found Malawi lagging on outbreak and pandemic preparedness.

This meant the country had to pull up its socks especially that cholera was at its peak.

The cholera outbreak, which was, and is still considered the biggest to have ever occurred in Malawi in the past 10 years from 2022, compelled numerous stakeholders to come onto the scene to complement government efforts in controlling it.

A week could not pass by without organisations, including the private sector and individuals of goodwill, making donations to health centres, district health offices, district councils and other government ministries, departments and agencies.

Such efforts, compounded with availability of oral vaccines provided by the International Coordinating Group with support from the Global Alliance on Vaccines, WHO as well as other international organisations, played a key role in controlling the outbreak towards the end of the first quarter of 2023.

WHO representative in Malawi Dr Neema Kimambo in April 2023 said supporting the country’s Ministry of Health was key in eradicating the outbreak.

She said: “As WHO, in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund, we are supporting the Ministry of Health to safeguard gains we have acquired in responding to the cholera outbreak with oral cholera vaccination as an important intervention.”

With more oral cholera vaccines trekking into the country, Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda said such an intervention was critical to reinforce control measures.

As at April 2023, the Public Health Institute of Malawi indicated that 1 736 people had succumbed to the outbreak while 110 were in treatment units and 57 786 cases were overall reported.

But while Malawi managed to control the outbreak in 2023, the only threat at present is a surge in cases in neighbouring Zambia.

According to Zambia’s Ministry of Health, as of December 2023, 98 deaths were recorded while a cumulative 3 015 cases were overall reported