• The county government is working with Kenya Red Cross to treat patients.
• County is sensitising the communities on hygiene.
Image: RUTH AURA
At least 708 cholera cases have been reported in Tana River county since November last year, a health official has said.
Of the number, 17 deaths have been recorded.
Health executive Javan Bonaya said the first case of cholera was reported on November 17 in Madogo, Tana North subcounty.
The numbers have been rising since then and by Tuesday this week, they had recorded 708 cases.
With help from the Kenya Red Cross, Bonaya said they started dealing with the outbreak in December.
“We received a tent from the Kenya Red Cross which we used to set up a cholera treatment unit in Madogo and by December we had two tents,” he said.
Bonaya said out of the 708 cases, 645 were reported in Madogo and 63 in Bura.
“Due to the interventions that we put in place, the cases in Madogo started going down. However, we started seeing an increase in Bura. By January 31, we had 11 active cases in Bura and seven in Madogo," he said.
Bonaya said they received drugs last week to add on to what the county government had purchased.
He said the disease is mainly caused by contaminated water and with the help of community health workers they are educating residents on good hygiene.
The health CEC said they are also conducting contact tracing to reach out to every person who interacted with the affected patients.
“We are disinfecting washrooms and households. On Tuesday, we disinfected six washrooms and six households," Bonaya said.
He said they are treating the water by giving the communities aqua taps.
"On Tuesday we issued 400 aqua taps as we conduct outreach programmes to sensitise the community on the importance of cleanliness and general hygiene,” Bonaya said.
He said they have also been working with political leaders and a WhatsApp group was created to report cases for immediate intervention.
Bonaya said they are going to work with Tana River County Water and Sewerage Company to urge people to drink clean water.
“We will visit all the boreholes available in the county. The team will map them out so that water can be tested,” he said.
“As county we will do our best and continue to put in place measures to end cholera,” he said.
Governor Dhadho Godhana said, “It's not the first time we are having cholera outbreak in Tana. We have had breakout of other diseases like typhoid, which we managed to deal with through the help of partners, including the national government.”
“But I can confirm that the spread has been handled and our officers are doing everything possible to ensure that it does not go beyond Maroro and Madogo.”