Malawi leads the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) cholera fatalities despite ranking second in overall cases recorded these past two years in eight countries.

This is according to statistics presented yesterday at a virtual Extra-Ordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government to discuss the cholera situation in the region.

Malawi, whose President Lazarus Chakwera attended the summit from Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe, has recorded 1 771 deaths from  59 106 cases between January 1 2022 and January 24 2024.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, which has the highest number of cases at 71 023, lies second on fatalities having registered 766 deaths, 1 005 less than Malawi.

A cholera treatment centre in Lilongwe at the height of the outbreak

It is an illustration of Malawi’s struggles to manage cholera cases in a manner that contains the case fatality rate of three percent.

The summit comes against a background of a multi-country outbreak of cholera that some Sadc member States have experienced recently with Malawi’s neighbours Zimbabwe and Zambia, the epicentre of the latest scourge.

Sadc chairperson João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, President of the Republic of Angola, hosted the summit which has endorsed Sadc Ministers of Health measures for tackling the outbreak in the region.

Among others, they seek to strengthen regional collaboration on cross-border outbreak risk assessment and public health surveillance to enhance early detection and prevention of outbreak-prone diseases.

Member-States are also urged to “jointly plan and implement synchronised cross-border cholera vaccination campaigns, as appropriate, and mobilise vaccines for affected and non-affected countries…

“Increase investment in the current cholera emergency response while maintaining long-term investment for a sustainable solution to the recurrent cholera crisis.”

According to the communique which Sadc issued after the summit, the ministers’ recommendations also call for investment in water, hygiene and sanitation infrastructure.

In his opening remarks, the Sadc chairperson called for the acceleration of local and regional manufacturing of cholera vaccines, a point the ministers’ measures echoed. 

On his part, the Sadc executive secretary Elias Magosi called on the region to escalate interventions and recommendations made in previous meetings by the Ministers of Health.

Failure to take these steps, he warned, would make Sadc more exposed to the spread of the disease.

The post MW leads Sadc cholera deaths amid lesser cases first appeared on The Nation Online.

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