UN: Diarrhoea has killed 657 in Sudan

Since August 2016, 657 were killed due to watery diarrhoea, while over 30,500 have been infected by the disease, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has announced in a report.

OCHA’s report quoted statistics released by the Sudanese Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The UN organisation pointed out that the females amounted to 54 per cent of the number of infected people, while children under the age of five amounted to 8.1 per cent of the total number of infected people.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) continues to work with the Sudanese health ministry to support the health centres through delivering the needed medical supplies, healthcare vocational training, as well as treating water resources and creating new sources of clean water, the report noted.

The report added that the WHO has supported 14 treatment centres that serve some 1.4 million people in 9 Sudanese states; it also provided medical care to 27,500 infected people across the whole country.

Watery diarrhoea is a disease that inflicts the digestive system, the second most important cause of death for under five children globally, according to WHO. It is often caused by viral or bacterial infections through contaminated food or water sources.