Five million people are at risk of cholera in drought-hit Ethiopia, where acute watery diarrhea has broken out in crowded, unsanitary conditions, the WHO said on Friday.
Cholera, an acute intestinal infection, causes watery diarrhea that can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death if treatment is not promptly given, according to the UN agency.
“Overall, 8.8 million people are at risk of malaria and 5 million of cholera [in Ethiopia],” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in a note sent to journalists.
Ethiopian health officials have confirmed cases of acute watery diarrhea in the Somali, Afar and Oromiya regions of Ethiopia, he said.
“It is not confined to the refugees,” Jasarevic said.
WHO is delivering emergency health kits to Ethiopia and helping train health workers in treating malnutrition and in detecting disease outbreaks, he said. Drought across the Horn of Africa, now affecting more than 11 million people in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia, has increased the risk of the spread of infectious diseases, especially polio, cholera and measles, the WHO says.
“So far[, the] WHO has not received any report of polio cases, it really important to help countries to keep their polio-free status,” Jasarevic said.
Somalis fleeing severe drought and intensified fighting have been arriving at the rate of more than 1,700 a day in Ethiopia, where 4.5 million people now need assistance, about a 50 percent rise since April, he said.
Two million children in Ethiopia are at risk of catching measles, a disease that can be deadly in children, he said. Ethiopian officials reported 17,584 measles cases and 114 deaths during the first half of the year, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokeswoman Marixie Mercado said. The majority of cases were in children.
Measles has also broken out in the sprawling Kenyan Dadaab camps, with 462 cases confirmed including 11 deaths, Jasarevic said.
Dadaab, an overcrowded complex of three camps, now holds some 380,000 refugees, the UN refugee agency said on Friday.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ office plans to begin a massive airlift this weekend to bring tents and other aid supplies to the remote border region, spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing.
A Boeing 747 flight carrying 100 tonnes of tents is expected to land in Nairobi today, he said. Six further flights were planned over the next two weeks. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres welcomed an announcement by Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Thursday that Kenya is to open an extension to the camps to ease congestion at Dadaab, where 1,300 Somali refugees arrive daily.
“It will prevent congestion increasing further in the short term. Obviously larger needs relate to the need to undertake humanitarian efforts inside Somalia itself,” Edwards said. The UN carried out its first airlift of emergency supplies in two years to southern Somalia — an area controlled by al-Shabaab rebels — on Wednesday, UNICEF said.
“Ten health kits, each sufficient to treat 10,000 people over 3 months are also en route via road,” Mercado said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not