The Ministry of Health has delivered drugs and disinfectants
worth 12 million Shillings to Moroto as Cholera cases continue
to rise in the District. The consignment was delivered to Loputuk Health Centre III by the National Medical Stores (NMS).
According to the in-charge Phillip Lotee, Moroto district requested for more supplies as the caseload reached 300 patients, with at least nine admissions on a daily basis. He said the supplies
include drugs, enough to treat about 200 cholera patients, disinfectants and
personal protective equipment for frontline health workers.
Lotee says delivery of the supplies is a boost to efforts of containing the disease that has hit the district, which is also struggling to manage COVID-19 at its porous border with Kenya.
//Cue in; Ministry of Health…
Cue out…management equipment.”//
The Cholera outbreak in Moroto has rapidly spread to cover over 60
villages across six Sub Counties in the District including the Municipal Council.
Health authorities have discharged 297 people since the outbreak was confirmed on May 11 with 17 still under care.
Official reports maintain three persons have died of Cholera. But
the local leaders have disputed the figures. Andrew Napaja, the district
Chairperson and chairman of the Moroto District Cholera Taskforce says that at least
five people have so far died from Cholera.
The district Cholera taskforce has stepped up mass
sensitizations by educating the community through radio and open-air messages
to encourage the residents to dig and use latrines. Open defecation due to low latrine coverage that currently
stands at 24 per cent is blamed for the widespread of Cholera across the whole
district.
Meanwhile, sections of the community have embarked on the construction
of latrines after a section of partners provided them with tools. Mercy Corps supplied pickaxes, spades, hand hoes, 100 jerricans to the vulnerable communities to
enhance their capacity to dig latrines.
Paul Konyen Lotiile, the vice-chairperson of Lokwakwa
village says the community has embarked on building temporal latrines as a precaution
to the spread of cholera. However, he has expressed concern over the inability of the
community to buy slabs that would enable the latrines they dig to last some years.
//Cue in; “We have been talking …
Cue out… can be easy.”//
Our reporter says that some of the homesteads have embraced
sanitation practices while others said they are busy on the farms and cannot
have the luxury of digging a latrine, an issue some local leaders have mooted that
local councils should enact by-laws that punish residents without latrines.
Stanley Ebele
Freelancer