Cholera Kills 19 in Somali Capital Over Two Days

An outbreak of cholera had claimed at least 19 lives here in the Somali capital in two days, a senior health official said Wednesday.

Dr. Osman Mohamud Dufle, coordinator of the Joint Health Authority in the divided city, said that 15 of the victims had died Monday and the others Tuesday.

Dufle said the number of fatalities could be higher because some victims had died at home and, as Muslims, were buried within 24 hours of death.

Most of the victims were from densely populated neighborhoods where sanitation is poor.

Dufle said that the Joint Health Authority does not have enough medicine to treat the disease and that the clinics set up by the International Committee of the Red Cross to handle cholera cases are insufficient.

The most common treatment for cholera is oral rehydration solution, which Dufle said is scarce in the Indian Ocean port city.

On Jan. 14, the Nairobi, Kenya-based Somalia Aid Coordination Body, a grouping of U.N. and private relief agencies, confirmed the outbreak and said clinics for cholera victims would be established throughout the city.

On Tuesday, Doctors Without Borders opened a clinic to treat cholera patients at Forlanini Hospital in northern Mogadishu. Action Against Hunger, a humanitarian organization, plans another clinic in southern Mogadishu.

The bacterial disease is spread by food or water contaminated by feces and causes severe diarrhea and vomiting. Victims often die of dehydration, and the mortality rate for untreated cases is 50%.

Somalia has had no functioning government since the 1991 ouster of late dictator Mohamed Siad Barre by a coalition of rebels.

The rebels then turned on one another, and the country disintegrated into fiefdoms lacking social services.