According to the United Nations, Borno reported more than 5,000 cholera cases, including 178 fatalities. About half of the instances were in places where a lot of people had been displaced by conflict.
The chance of contracting the intestinal ailment, which results in severe diarrhoea and vomiting, is put at around one million people. It is frequently transmitted by tainted food and drink, and if left untreated, it causes dehydration and death.
In Borno, the epicenter of a continuing Islamist insurgency that has forced thousands of people into camps and put a strain on sanitation infrastructure and drinkable water supplies for more than ten years, cholera epidemics are not unusual.
I WAS VERY TERRIFIED.
In Maiduguri, a city of around 800,000 people, large areas of stagnant water hastened the spread of the bacterium and made it challenging to contain, according to humanitarian workers.
The largest outbreak compared to previous years, according to Nurse Augusta Chinenye Obodoefuna, manager of the Medecins Sans Frontieres treatment facility (MSF).
According to her, patients were arriving twice as quickly this year than they did during the outbreak last year, and the majority of them were kids.
Patients at the treatment facility dozed out on canvases while receiving rehydration drips. Parents sat on plastic chairs next to their infants in worry.
Ali Mohammed, 17, was wrapped with a plaster and was hunched weakly against a metal drip holder. They were transported to the center after his mother Yagana Mohammed took him to the hospital after he spent the entire night throwing up.
She said that the fact that he was finally receiving care was comforting, but that night of vomiting and the trip to the camp had been frightening.
She remembered, “I got extremely afraid.” The physicians rushed here to check on us when we got here, and they surrounded us. “
