KAMPALA - A cholera outbreak at a camp for the war-displaced in northern Uganda has killed at least two people and sickened 25 in the past week, UN officials in the region said Monday.
The cholera casualties are residents of a newly established camp in Gulu district that houses between 6,000 to 8,000 Ugandans who have fled their homes fearing attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the officials said.
"Two people died in the community and up to yesterday (Sunday), 25 cases have been recorded," said Vincent Oryem, a doctor working for the World Health Organization.
He told AFP by phone from Gulu that the cholera outbreak had been confirmed by labratory tests after residents of the Jengali camp for for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) reported severe diarrhoea and vomiting last week.
Jengali has about 1,600 huts and is inhabited mainly by IDPs who were moved there to reduce crowding and attendant health risks at the nearby Pabbo camp where cholera broke out in October, officials said.
Oryem said medical teams believe the new cholera outbreak is the same strain that hit Pabbo, one of the oldest IDP camps in Uganda and home to some 67,000 people, as water sources at Jengali were found not to be contaminated.
"We concluded that some residents carried cholera strains from Pabbo following the last epidemic there last October," he said.
Gulu district officials said they had launched a community mobilisation exercise to emphasize personal and community hygiene in a bid to prevent the spread of cholera at Jengali.
Cholera, which can be fatal if untreated, attacks the intestines, causing diarrhoea, vomiting, and dehydration.
It is caused by drinking or washing in or eating food washed in contaminated water and can easily spread in congested living quarters such as camps for IDPs and refugees.
The war in nothern Uganda has driven more than 1.6 million people from their homes, most of whom now live in squalid camps like Pabbo.
The LRA claim to be fighting to bring down the secular government in Kampala to replace it with one based on the biblical Ten Commandments.
But they have repeatedly targeted civilians whom they have killed, mutilated or abducted children for forcible recruitment as rebel fighters or sex slaves.
04/11/2005 15:17 GMT