UN health agency: spike in cholera cases in Somalia as uprooted lack water, basic services

WHO: spike in cholera cases in Somalia

GENEVA — The World Health Organization says cholera is spreading fast in Somalia as people flee fighting between the government and rebels.

WHO spokesman Paul Garwood says 132 people were ill with cholera last week in one hospital in the capital, Mogadishu. He says most of the sick are children, and that three people have died.

Garwood said Friday that the caseload in the hospital jumped 27 percent in a week. He said cholera was spreading elsewhere, too.

The agency does not have overall figures.

Fighting between Islamists and the Western-backed government has uprooted thousands of people. Many live in Mogadishu’s streets without clean water.

Garwood said hospitals have reported 1,400 injured and at least 31 deaths from fighting over the last two months.

(This version CORRECTS deaths to three instead of 31, which refers to people killed in recent fighting.)