Guinea-Bissau: Cholera epidemic lessons ignored
cholera epidemic sweeping across Guinea Bissau has now infected 1,077 people - three-quarters of them in the capital Bissau - and killed 25, leading experts to ask why lessons from previous epidemics have not been taken on board.
BISSAU, 1 August 2008 (IRIN) - Cholera killed 400 people and infected 25,000 across the country in 2005. “We wrote reports and made many recommendations to the government after the 2005 cholera outbreak but none of them were ever implemented, and so we are left to start all over again,” said Augostino Betunda, joint director of services at the Bissau centre of epidemiology, which is charged with diagnosing the disease.
Since then, water and sanitation infrastructure in the capital has hardly improved, according to Betunda, and still only one in five people can access piped water in the capital.
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