Ugandas ministry of health on Monday said cholera has broken out in the capital Kampala, leaving seven people hospitalized. The ministry in a statement said the seven are currently undergoing treatment at China-Uganda Friendship Hospital. Three of these cases are from one family residing in Mpigi District while the other four are from two families residing in Kalerwe in Kampala city, the statement said. The ministry said in order to avert further spread, it has set up two isolation centers, one at Mulago National Referral Hospital and the other at China-Uganda Friendship Hospital. The ministry also said it has intensified case management and surveillance of cholera cases. Communities are also being sensitized on cholera and its prevention and control measures. Cholera, according to the ministry, is a serious acute infectious disease characterized by watery diarrhea and vomiting and kills a person within hours. It is spread through eating and drinking food contaminated with fecal matter of an infected person. The weather department recently warned that the ongoing heavy rains in the country are likely to result into the outbreak infectious and communicable diseases like cholera, typhoid, dysentery and malaria. The ministry last week started a cholera vaccination exercise in some parts of the country where the disease has broken out. In midwestern Uganda, the disease has left over 45 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo dead and over 2,000 others hospitalized since it broke out in February this year. The Oral Cholera Vaccine is a key weapon in the fight against cholera. But it is important that other efforts such as improving water, sanitation and hygiene are stepped up, otherwise cholera will continue to haunt communities, Yonas Tegegn Woldemariam, the World Health Organization representative in Uganda, said at the launch of the vaccination exercise.
