NAIROBI: South Sudan is enduring its worst cholera outbreak in two decades, the United Nations said Monday, with the country reporting almost 700 deaths in a six month period.
\nThe deeply impoverished nation \u2014 despite its major oil deposits \u2014 has been plagued by insecurity since declaring independence in 2011.
\nParts of the country have lately seen fresh waves of violence, with clashes between forces allied to President Salva Kiir and his long-time rival, First Vice President Riek Machar, displacing tens of thousands.
\nUNICEF said that 40,000 cholera cases were reported from the end of September to March 18, \u201cincluding 694 deaths country-wide, its worst outbreak in 20 years.\u201d
\nIt said half the cases were children under 15.
\nSouth Sudan and Angola were facing the most severe of several outbreaks across eastern and southern Africa, the agency said.
\nAngola reported over 7,500 cases, including 294 deaths from 7 January 2025 to 18 March 2025, UNICEF said, warning there were \u201chigh risks for further escalation.\u201d
\nEarlier this month the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in South Sudan said 50,000 people had been displaced since February as violence flared in northeastern Upper Nile State.
\nIt said a cholera treatment unit in the Upper Nile State\u2019s Nasir county had closed, with 23 humanitarian workers forced to leave.
\nThe region has been the main focus of clashes that are threatening a fragile power-sharing agreement between Kiir and Machar.
\nSouth Sudan has seen a steady increase in cholera \u2014 an acute form of diarrhea that is treatable with antibiotics and hydration, but which can be deadly if untreated \u2014 over the past three years.
\nIn 2022 the country marked its first resurgence in five years, following an outbreak between June 2016 and December 2017 that killed 436 people.
\nIn December, medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned South Sudan was seeing \u201calarming and rapid increase\u201d in the disease.
\nIt said 92 people had died following an outbreak in Unity state, and that it had treated over 1,210 people in just four weeks in Bentiu city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NAIROBI: South Sudan is enduring its worst cholera outbreak in two decades, the United Nations said Monday, with the country reporting almost 700 deaths in a six month period. The deeply impoverished nation \u2014 despite its major oil deposits \u2014 has been plagued by insecurity since declaring independence in 2011. Parts of the country have …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78844,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78833\/revisions\/78844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}