By Patience Lunda:
Cholera cases continue to drop in the country, a development the Ministry of Health has attributed to the administration of Oral Cholera Vaccine (OCV).
OCV administration work ran from January 13 to 19 2025 in the cholera hotspot districts of Karonga, Balaka, Machinga and Mzimba North.
The ministry’s spokesperson Adrian Chikumbe said Monday that the country started registering the decrease once the programme was rolled out.
“Despite the decline in figures, there is still a need for people to maintain sanitation and hygiene standards because they remain crucial in preventing the outbreak.
“We still have about 43,000 doses of OCV in stock. They will be used in case of another outbreak.
We are still pushing for the observance of sanitation and hygiene and that applies to areas which have not been registering cases at all,” Chikumbe said.
As at March 10 2025, the country had not recorded any cholera case—which has been the case since January.
On his part, epidemiologist Adamson Muula said the country would continue grappling with cholera if people continued consuming unsafe water.
“We have seen the data and, indeed, cases are going down but it also means that our sanitation level is among the poorest and, currently, very few countries have cholera,” he said.
Cumulatively, the country has recorded 306 cases and 15 deaths from September 8 2024 to date.
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