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LUSAKA. – The cholera outbreak in Zambia, the worst in 20 years, continues to spread and shows no sign of abating.

To date, more than 15 000 cholera cases and over 570 deaths have been reported since it started in October, with an alarming fatality rate of 4 percent, the World Health Organization said.

The transmission of cholera has been aggravated by challenges in water supply and sanitation, including flooding, shallow wells, and difficulties in accessing clean water, said the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA.

Reopening of schools after the Christmas holiday has been delayed for five weeks until Feb 12 because of the deadly outbreak.

National Heroes Stadium, the largest soccer facility in the capital Lusaka, has been converted into a cholera treatment center, receiving patients from across the country.

The current vaccination campaign targets children, health workers and people at high risk of infection in the worst affected areas.

The government, together with nonprofits, is working on providing clean water to affected people.

Martin Griffiths, emergency relief coordinator of OCHA, allocated $2.5 million on Monday from the Central Emergency Response Fund to support the response to the cholera outbreak in Zambia.

“The outbreak is spreading fast — an average of 400 new cases are reported daily,” he said.

Last week, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, through its Southern Africa Regional Coordination Centre, said it had deployed 15 technical assistance officers to support the affected areas.

Somalia is now confronted with a cholera outbreak, which is “rapidly spreading” across multiple areas within the country, Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said.

Meanwhile, The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the continent’s chief health advisory body, has tied the worst outbreak of cholera in three years to climate change, saying adverse weather is raising the risk of this disease faster than in the rest of the world.

That’s as floods in Democratic Republic of Congo — and across much of southern Africa — stretch already fragile health systems, limit access to safe water and sanitation and force people from their homes.

“Cholera in Africa is a climate change issue,” said Jean Kaseya, director general of Addis Ababa-based Africa CDC.

Outbreaks of cholera have swept across more than a dozen countries in the region over the past year, causing hundreds of deaths from rural Zambia to the outskirts of the capital of South Africa, the continent’s most developed nation.

The surge in cases comes even as Africa is the region least responsible for climate change, but one of the hardest hit by adverse weather caused by a warming world. – ChinaDaily-Time