Word: cholerae
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...World Health Organization confirmed that a dysentery epidemic among Rwandan refugees in Goma, Zaire has replaced cholera as the number one killer and could claim up to 45,000 lives. Epidemiologists now say the number of cholera cases has dropped by half, but that dysentery -- a contagious, bloody diarrhea that is much harder to treat -- has more than made up for the decline. U.S. Army convoys delivered 100,000 gallons of fresh water, a triumph over a bottleneck at Goma's tiny airport, but far short of the 1.25 million gallons needed daily to meet the refugees' basic needs...
...woman at the camp gave birth four weeks prematurely. Early the next morning the mother seemed alert as a nurse set up a drip to treat her cholera; but she continued to bleed, and died before noon. Her husband arose and left, and the baby, still caked with blood, was left alone on the mat. "Without breast-feeding she is going to die," said one relief worker, swaddling the baby in a cloth wrap and leaving her in a cardboard box in the corner of a tent...
...most determined fighters in the camps are the medical commandos of the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, the French relief agency that dispatches physicians and instant field hospitals to the world's most vicious war zones. They are fighting the spread of one killer after another: cholera, dysentery, measles, even, some U.N. workers fear, bubonic plague...
...Wednesday the first confirmed case of cholera appeared; within 24 hours 800 people were dead; then it became too hard to keep count. Aid workers set up isolation tents to control the epidemic, but know they cannot. Every minute another patient arrives, calling for help, for water, and then giving up and settling helplessly on the ground, staring at the few workers who bustle around. At the rate the disease is spreading, between 7,000 and 70,000 are almost certain to die in coming days. "I've never seen anything like it," said Dr. Koen Henckaerts. "But then...
...Cholera and a newer threat, dysentery, have killed at least 50,000 Rwandan refugees in the last two weeks, and humanitarian officials fear that their plan to have refugees return from border camps in Zaire could spread disease throughout Rwanda. The rescue effort itself is drawing controversy: physicians are criticizing the U.N. World Food Program for transporting choleric refugees back to Rwanda's capital, Kigali. In one wave, 16 ill people apparently infected 700 others...