Chad appeals for aid as cholera kills over 100

N’DJAMENA, Aug 27 (Reuters) – Chad needs almost $200,000 in international aid to help control a cholera epidemic that has killed more than 100 people in the past two months, a government minister said late on Thursday.

“By August 22, we had a total of 2,198 cases, 108 of them fatal,” Justice Minister Kalzoume Pahimi Deubet told diplomats and reporters.

He said the impoverished central African country, already struggling to cope with some 200,000 refugees from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan, needed 105 million CFA francs ($193,500) to fight the outbreak.

Chad’s meagre resources have been stretched by the influx of men, women and children fleeing fighting in Darfur, which the United Nations says has triggered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Officials said the cholera cases in Chad were mostly confined to the capital N’Djamena and nearby towns, although aid workers in the remote refugee camps in the east fear poor sanitation could also trigger an outbreak there.

The camps are near capacity and Chad says it needs a loan from the International Monetary Fund if it is also to deal with other pressing domestic concerns.

There have been deadly outbreaks of cholera this year in Mozambique in southern Africa; Chad, Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo in the centre; and Guinea, Sierra Leone and Niger in the west. At least 456 people have died.