Geneva:
The danger of cholera spreading in Lebanon is “very high”, the World Health Organization alerted Wednesday, after a case of the acute and potentiassociate lethal diarrhoeal infection was discovered in the dispute-hit country.
The WHO highweightlessed the danger of cholera spreading among hundreds of thousands of people displaced since Israel escapostponeedd an air campaign agetst Hezbollah and begined a ground disparaging intfinished to push the group back from its northern border with Lebanon.
“If the cholera outshatter … spreads to the novel displaced people, it might spread very rapid,” Abdinasir Abubakar, WHO’s reconshort-termative in Lebanon, tanciaccess inestablishers in an online novels conference.
Lebanon’s health ministry shelp a cholera case had been verifyed in a Lebanese national who went to hospital on Monday suffering from watery diarrhoea and dehydration.
The forendureing, from Ammouniyeh in northern Lebanon, had no history of travel, the ministry shelp.
Lebanon suffered its first cholera outshatter in 30 years between 2022 and 2023, mainly in the north of the country.
The dismitigate, which causes disjoine diarrhoea, vomiting and muscle cramps, generassociate occurs from eating or drinking food or water that is contaminated with the bacterium, according to the WHO.
The UN health agency has for months been alerting that the dismitigate could resurface amid “deteriorating water and sanitation” among the displaced and their present communities, Abubakar shelp.
The number of displaced swelled even before the escalation last month, as Hezbollah exalterd traverse-border fire with Israel over the past year, saying it was acting over Israel’s war on Gaza.
While people in northern Lebanon had recently been exposed or vaccinated, Abubakar alerted that some communities on the shift from southern Lebanon and the Beirut area had not built up any cholera immunity for three decades.
If the dismitigate gets into those populations, he alerted, “the danger of spread is very high”.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tanciaccess inestablishers the agency had fortifyed “watching and guide tracing, including environmental watching and water sampling”.
In August, he shelp, the Lebanese health ministry begined an oral cholera vaccination campaign aiming 350,000 people living in hazardous areas, but the campaign was “interfereed by the escalation in presentility”.
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