My very first cholera epidemic

This week’s adventure…Cholera epidemic response, Uvira town. I got word that there was an epidemic evolving in Uvira, way down south on Lake Tanganyika, and last weekend, it was official, there was an outbreak of Cholera in Uvira, and the RRM team was sent into action…So piled into the jeep, cut through Rwanda to save some time, and rolled into the Uvira hospital to assess the situation. For those of you who are not familiar with Cholera, its diarrheic disease caused by bacteria (I think), and very closely linked to water quality. You get it, you get the runs, that about sums it up, except perhaps the scale of the affectation—severe cases can lose up to 20ltr of water a day. So try to picture it, an enclosure, with a building at the centre full of beds with a single hole in the middle—everything made of tarp. Quarantine procedures require everyone to constantly step in and out of chlorinated foot washing stations to prevent any would be carriers from taken infected faeces out side (its very very opportunistic disease). So we arrived to get the figures, assess the state of the centre, etc, and wound up sidestepping faeces…there were so many patients, that the centre had run out of space and had people receving treatment outside, under the sun—unbelievable! Squalor and shit. To the credit of the hosipital, this outbreak had caught them by surprise as cholera is endemic in the area and this particular situation was at least a month early. In fact, they are about a month away from completing a brand new (gorgeous) Cholera treatment centre right next door to the one in question.
So what to do? We built another observation hall, rebuilt the wall to keep pedestrians and chickens away from contamination, and coordinated with the other stakeholders to implement a water chlorination and hygiene promotion programme in the neighborhoods worst affected by the outbreak.
Great, and my team did a fantastic job…the observation hall is decked out in shining grey unicef tarp, and they installed a 5000litre bladder, complete with a little hanger. But what would a blog entry be without a bit of humour, or irony or something? So how would you suggest filling a 5000litre bladder with water? You would think one might hire a tanker truck for the job. Correct, but for some reason this did not happen. A truck was in fact hired, but there was no tank. Instead, a 10,000litre bladder was hauled on to the back of a normal truck, and it was carted off to the Pakistani Peacekeeping battalion logistics’ yard for a filling. The Pakistanis were a little startled, but agreed to supply some water, but only let the driver into the compound (nice). So ten tones of water were pumped into this second bladder on the back of the truck, and somehow, it wound up punctured, at which point—again, try to picture this—10,000 litres of water blew out of the bladder mounted on the back of this truck, and proceeded to erode the foundation of the giant water tank mounted in the air…
Alright, the tank didn’t collapse, no one died, but suffice it to say, I was a little perturbed to hear that this had happened. And in the end, we were able to convince the PakBat to swing by the hospital and fill the bladder.
Weird, huh…and to top it all off, I went half blind for about 15 minutes and lost feeling in my tongue…apparently it’s a dehydration thing, so to all of you languishing in the stuffy Vancouver heat, be sure to drink lots of water, or you might go blind…
Amani cabissa
C