The president of the Angolan Doctors’ Union (SINMEA), Adriano Manuel, said on Wednesday that the lack of sanitation, increasing poverty and disinvestment in preventive health were fuelling the emergence of cholera in the country, noting that “there was no shortage of warnings”.
The Angolan authorities announced on Tuesday that five deaths had been recorded out of 25 suspected cases of cholera in the Paraíso neighbourhood, Cacuaco municipality, Luanda province, the Ministry of Health said.
“The cause of cholera is intrinsically related to basic sanitation, this is the main cause and basic sanitation is related to poverty, […] poverty has increased in our country and people are struggling to survive and go looking for food in the rubbish,” Adriano Manuel told Lusa today.
According to the doctor, the unhealthy environment, aggravated by irregular rubbish collection, and the scarcity of water, especially in outlying areas of the Angolan capital, lead to the emergence of various diseases.
“There’s no rubbish collection, no water treatment (…) as the water isn’t treated and the food isn’t treated at the same time, this negatively influences the fact that we have cholera in our country,” he said.
Adriano Manuel considered cholera a public health problem. He lamented the “lack of investment” in the primary health system, which, in his opinion, “would solve all of” the major issues related to the country’s epidemiological profile.
What “kills the most in Angola is malaria, acute diarrhoeal diseases, respiratory diseases, all of which would be solved with a functional primary health system,” he noted.
According to the Ministry of Health note, people are showing vomiting symptoms and watery diarrhoea, and the Luanda provincial health office has “immediately” activated measures recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
In coordination with other institutions, the measures include disinfecting contaminated areas, identifying and tracing contacts, and conducting in-depth epidemiological and laboratory investigations to confirm suspected cases.
The president of SINMEA said the country needs to implement a strong health education system with the support of the media and awareness campaigns promoted by local administrations, believing that the country may not have control over a cholera outbreak.
“There is no system in our country that will be able to control the outbreak because there are no medicines, we have difficulties with rehydration serum in many hospitals, and there is a shortage of medicines in hospitals,” he said.
He also pointed out that the companies supplying medicines “have not been paid for almost 11 months” and “when that happens, there is this shortage of medicines [in hospitals]”.
“Unfortunately, the government insists on inverting the pyramid, that is, it invests in a curative system when it should invest in a preventative system, and we’re seeing the cholera issue here, and there’s no shortage of warning,” concluded the paediatrician.
Lusa