Paris
Paris reported nearly 200 cases of cholera on Friday on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, which is struggling to contain a deadly outbreak.
“As of June 18, 2024, 193 cases of cholera have been reported in Mayotte,” France's public health agency SPF reported in its weekly bulletin.
Of these, 172 were locally acquired cases and 21 were in people who had been infected in the neighbouring Comoros Islands or in countries on the African continent.
Cholera is an infectious disease that typically causes severe diarrhea, vomiting, and muscle cramps. It spreads easily in poor sanitation.
Mayotte, home to about 320,000 people, reported its first case of cholera in late April.
Two people have died since the outbreak began, including a three-year-old girl.
The SPF warned that the risk of infection was particularly high in disadvantaged areas “as long as access to drinking water and sanitation facilities remained inadequate”.
French authorities have been criticised for failing to ensure drinking water to prevent a cholera outbreak in their overseas territories.
President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday hosted a summit on vaccine production in Africa and called for making cholera “a thing of the past.”
Recent deadly cholera outbreaks in many parts of Africa have highlighted shortcomings in local vaccine production.
Comoros has been hit by a cholera outbreak for the past four months, with 134 deaths and more than 8,700 cases reported, according to a report released by local authorities this month.
