The Minister responsible for Health, Frédéric Valletoux, tried to reassure him this Thursday, May 9, during a trip to Mayotte, considering that the cholera epidemic that has been plaguing the island for about two months and which caused a first death on Wednesday is “contained.”
“We have a cholera outbreak that is contained. There is no explosion, but that does not mean it will stop overnight,” the minister told the press, on the sidelines of a “visit to the island’s university hospital.” .
If “the number of cases we have today does not stabilize,” the “rapid, coordinated and proportionate intervention of the services” made it possible to keep the “situation under control,” he added.
Death of a three-year-old girl
Previously, the Minister visited the Kirson district of Koungou, where at least fifty cases of cholera have been reported to date and where a three-year-old girl died on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 9.
Frédéric Valletoux recalled that in neighboring Comoros, “the epidemic began a month and a half earlier, but today there are thousands of cases and almost a hundred deaths.” “We see that in Mayotte the response is adequate,” he compared. At the scene, he spoke with the Regional Health Agency (ARS) teams in charge of disinfecting homes as soon as a case is suspected.
“We also distribute antibiotics to family members and vaccinate as much as possible. The population is very receptive,” explained Olivia Noël, field coordinator who is one of the 29 reservists who came as reinforcement to “contain the epidemic” on this island. French. Indian Ocean.
Estelle Youssouffa, Liot MP from Mayotte, recalled that “the population, mostly foreigners, does not always have a telephone and is often afraid of the authorities”, so “people wait until the last moment” to ask for help.
The elected representative recommends restarting the distribution of bottled water to limit the risks of contamination by dirty water, one of the vectors of transmission of the disease with contaminated food.
The first cases of cholera in Mayotte were recorded in mid-March among people returning from neighboring Comoros, where the epidemic is increasing with 98 deaths, according to the latest official report. In Mayotte, at the end of April the first diagnosed cases appeared in patients who had not left the island.
“Hang on over time”
Cholera, a bacterial disease, can cause acute diarrhea and lead to death from dehydration within one to three days. Since mid-March, Maoresi authorities have recorded 58 cases of cholera, including six active cases as of the latest report on May 6.
A protocol developed in February to prevent the spread of the disease provides for the disinfection of the patient’s home, the identification and treatment of contact cases and vaccination, progressively expanding the affected area around the home of the patient affected by cholera.
At the Mayotte university hospital, Alimata Gravaillac, head of the emergency service, stressed that the kwassas, these boats commonly used by immigrants from neighboring Comoros to reach Mayotte, “arrive directly to the hospital with sick people.”
These convoys, which she calls “health kwassas,” cause “additional pressure on caregivers.” Emergency doctors, who have “40 patients to treat” when they start work, will have to “move on for the long haul,” she estimated. Estelle Youssouffa stressed that convoys “can contaminate others during the journey.”
Questioned on RTL, Benjamín Davido, an infectious disease specialist at the Garches hospital (Hauts-de-Seine), stressed that “to turn off the tap, we would also have to address, in quotes, what is happening in the Comoros.”
The current epidemic will be “very difficult” to “stop, and we run the risk of ending up with a very rapid increase in cases, even several more deaths,” he warns.
Source: BFM TV
