ACTING Health Minister Douglas Syakalima says Nakonde District has recorded three more cholera cases, bringing the cumulative number to 10.

Speaking after touring some Nakonde residential areas, Saturday, Syakalima said three of the patients were in a stable condition.

“We had to fly in today to come and have on the spot check on the outbreak of this diarrhea disease cholera. Yesterday, we were standing at seven people but I am told today, after 24 hours, we have another three cases so we are standing at 10. I think three are stable, some of them are still receiving quite a lot of help from our health workers,” he said.

He warned people against drilling wells next to pit latrines.

“We also had a feel in the field to go and check how exactly houses are built and pit latrines that they use. Although they have wells, we supply the chlorine, the unfortunate part of it is that the wells are nearby the toilets and this must be discouraged by everybody. We are putting up a lot of work, DMMU has supplied a few supplies for the use in the households so I think that we will defeat cholera. We must have a zero cholera issue here as a country but we must also appreciate that this case which came here didn’t start from Nakonde, it came from across the border. So, ourselves we didn’t even have cholera,” said Syakalima.

Meanwhile, Muchinga Province Permanent Secretary Henry Mukungule expressed fear that the outbreak might soon spread to other areas, since Nakonde was a transit town.

“We received information through the PHP that we had an outbreak of cholera in Nakonde district and yesterday late in the evening, I was informed that you were coming to look at the situation in your acting capacity as Minister of Health. We thought it was wise that we come through to welcome you and to work with you and see what interventions are going to be put in place in order for us to avoid further spread of the disease to other districts. As you may be aware, Minister, Nakonde is a very busy place, it is actually a transit point to various areas and as such, we have people moving and this situation can actually make the disease spread even faster. We are grateful to you, Minister, that you have responded very very quickly with your team to come and help us respond to this challenge that has befallen us. A few things have already been put in place, a centre has already been established where our patients are being kept. By this morning, we had recorded about 10 cases and those have been confined at the centre and as a quick response, we have done a few things. One of a few things that we did at the province was to make some donations through Disaster Management at the province and we brought some resources that we thought could be used very very quickly to help the situation to avoid further spread of the disease,” said Mukungule.