Sharjah24 – AFP: Syria's health ministry has recorded 39 deaths from cholera and nearly 600 cases in an outbreak spreading in the war-ravaged country that the United Nations warned is "evolving alarmingly".
"In Syria, more than 10,000 suspected cases of cholera have been reported just in the past six weeks," the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a briefing on Wednesday.
A total of 594 cases have been recorded across 11 of Syria's 14 provinces since late September, the health ministry said Tuesday, after the WHO warned the situation was "evolving alarmingly in affected governorates and expanding to new areas".
Most of those who have died are in the northern province of Aleppo, and it was not immediately clear if the dead were included in the overall case tally.
It is the first major outbreak of cholera in Syria in more than a decade.
The extremely virulent disease is generally contracted from contaminated food or water, and causes diarrhoea and vomiting.
It can spread in residential areas that lack proper sewerage networks or mains drinking water.
The disease is making its first major comeback since 2009 in Syria, where nearly two-thirds of water treatment plants, half of pumping stations and one-third of water towers have been damaged by more than a decade of war, according to the United Nations.
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