Suspected cholera cases hit South Sudan capital

Dozens of people have fallen ill with suspected cholera in South Sudan’s capital of Juba, the United Nations said on Tuesday and warned of a huge humanitarian crisis due to the ongoing crisis.

A spokesman from the UN said suspected number of cholera victims has been increasing and said it ranged from about 30 to 70, including six or seven deaths, but laboratory confirmation of the disease was pending.

“We expect a huge humanitarian crisis. Even before the current crisis, the health system in South Sudan was facing a crisis due to near economic collapse,” World Health Organization spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said.

Cholera is a type of acute watery diarrhoea which kills fewer than 1 percent of sufferers if there is proper treatment with oral rehydration salts, according to the World Health Organisation.

But conditions in Juba, where fighting erupted on July 7 between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those loyal to his deputy, Riek Machar, are far from ideal, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says.

IOM said recent fighting in the country uprooted about 36,000 people who sought shelter at U.N. compounds, and 15,000 are still displaced,