Cholera cases on rise in pilgrimage town

Senegalese health authorities are working to contain an outbreak of cholera in the Senegalese town of Touba just over a week before it plays host to an annual Muslim pilgrimage expected to gather together almost two million people. Officials since October have registered 16 deaths and a total 1,728 cases in the eastern Diourbel region where Touba is located, but the number of cases has risen in the past weeks, said Ousseynou Bah, who heads the health ministry’s epidemiological surveillance division. Pape Faye, the head of the ministry’s medical prevention unit, said that this month officials had registered around 30 new cases a day in Touba itself, which is 200 kms east of the capital. “The increase in the number of cases during the last two to three weeks is due to water supply problems in parts of Touba, where some water towers broke down,” he told IRIN. Senegalese authorities are especially worried about the increase days before hundreds of thousands of members of the Mouride Muslim brotherhood converge on Touba on 29 March to celebrate Magal. The celebration, which is a public holiday in 95 percent Muslim Senegal, marks the anniversary of the exile to Gabon in the 19th century of the founder of the brotherhood Cheikh Amadou Bamba. Touba’s population increases threefold during the festivities, as pilgrims arrive from Senegal, as well as from other African nations and from Europe and America, said Lamine Diouf of Hizbut-Tarqiyyah, which organises the event. Officials from the departments of health, hygiene and hydraulics have been called in urgently to deal with the problem before the start of the pilgrimage. “We are working with the hydraulics ministry to treat the water and with the energy ministry to reactivate water towers,” said Faye. “We have also reinforced Touba’s hygiene brigade in staff and equipment.” Cholera, an acute intestinal infection spread by contaminated water and food, reached West Africa in 1970 after an absence of more than a century. It is now endemic in much of the region, notably in Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire. Last October, the capital Dakar saw its first cholera epidemic in eight years. In just under a month, a total 861 cases were registered, including six deaths.