BANJUL - An outbreak of cholera in Senegal, which has killed 54 people, has spread to Gambia where it has killed two people in the last 48 hours, Gambian health officials said Wednesday.
Some 30 people were infected with the disease in the localities of Essau and Frafegny, north of the Gambian capital Banjul, said a spokesman for the national cholera surveillance committee.
The cholera infections in Gambia were first recorded on April 1 after the return of Muslim pilgrims from annual religious festival in the holy city of Touba in neighbouring Senegal. The Gambian government had advised pilgrims not to attend the festival because of the cholera outbreak.
In Senegal a total of 54 people have died in the past week with 3,400 people infected by the disease.
Senegalese health ministry official Pape Coumba Faye Faye said that large gatherings including the pilgrimage to Touba last week were behind the spread of the disease.
Over the week leading to the festival on March 29, hundreds of thousands of Muslims from around Africa and as far away as Europe arrived in Touba to more than double the million-strong population of Senegal's second city.
Faye said that public health officials had stepped up education campaigns on hygiene and safe food and drinking water to combat the outbreak.
Cholera is a waterborne disease which causes serious diarrhea and vomiting and can be fatal if not treated.
04/06/2005 17:14 GMT