A cholera outbreak has killed two people and affected some 50 others in the largest camp for people who fled their homes to escape an 18-year insurgency in northern Uganda, the United Nations said Thursday.
KAMPALA, Uganda — A cholera outbreak has killed two people and affected some 50 others in the largest camp for people who fled their homes to escape an 18-year insurgency in northern Uganda, the United Nations said Thursday.
The outbreak was triggered by contamination of water sources and poor sanitary conditions in the Pabbo camp that is home to some 67,000 people, said Chulho Hyun, a spokesman for the U.N. children's agency.
Household latrine coverage at the camp is only 12 percent, and U.N. investigations show that all household domestic water pots are contaminated with feces, as are two out of 14 boreholes and all six springs in the camp, said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Three to four cases of cholera are currently being reported daily. Aid workers are isolating patients and are urging residents to dig more pit latrines and use chlorinated water to contain the outbreak, U.N. officials said.
Pabbo camp, a sprawling forest of mushroom-shaped grass huts, is the largest home for the 1.6 million people displaced by the insurgency in northern Uganda. At least 20,000 people were left homeless Sunday after a rainstorm destroyed the roofs of more than 3,500 huts at the camp, located some 400 kilometers (249 miles) north of the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
Rebels have been fighting President Yoweri Museveni's government in northern Uganda since 1986, when Museveni, a southerner, seized power after a five-year bush war. The rebels say they want to overthrow Museveni but have no other stated goal.
Source: Associated Press
