Cholera Flares in Mexico City

Water shortages in the municipal system are being blamed indirectly for the capital’s first outbreak of cholera, which has reportedly killed two people and left 160 ill.

Residents of six working-class neighborhoods on the northern fringes of Mexico City drew water from an old spring when the municipal pipes ran dry during the first week in April. The spring was later found to be contaminated with the cholera bacteria, officials announced late Tuesday.

Officials said they had not previously notified the public about the outbreak because they were afraid of starting a panic.

Although isolated cases of cholera linked to contaminated food have previously been reported in the capital, they were barely 3% of the 11,200 cases reported nationally since Mexico City’s first cholera case in June, 1991. Health officials consider the latest incident the capital’s first cholera outbreak because it is the first traced to a common water supply.

“This is the first time the city has had a significant number of cholera cases from a single source,” said Dr. Arnulfo Ramos Figueroa, the city’s head epidemiologist.

Currently, 43 children are hospitalized and suspected to have cholera after drinking from the polluted spring. Adult patients have been tested or treated and released. Residents of the area said two people died in the outbreak, but health officials could not confirm the deaths.