Health Ministry delivers cholera treatment supplies to Moroto as cases hit 300

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | 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.

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 percent 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.

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.

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