Akobo Hospital|Courtesy

The cholera outbreak in Akobo County in Jonglei State continues to worsen due to lack of safe drinking water in villages as cases have now risen to more than 1,000 and 12 related deaths, a health official said.

Akobo Hospital Medical Director Nyuon Koang said most of cases are emerging from remote villages where residents fetch water directly from the river.

Mr. Koang said the rapid spread of the waterborne disease is exacerbated by open defecation and other unhygienic conditions, as well as lack of access to safe and clean drinking water.

“The biggest challenge is a lot of people are going to fetch the water from the river directly which they are drinking direct from the river so they have rather have a borehole or a clean drinking water,” he said.

“The town is the one with the supply of clean water. But in the villages, there are no clean water for them. This is why we are now receiving a lot of cases from the villages and even some of these cases are not reaching to the hospital due to distance.”

He called on the government and humanitarian organizations to intervene urgently and provide clean water sources, such as boreholes, and improving health services to contain the outbreak

“I urge the government of south Sudan to respond to this issue and to urge relief organizations to respond to this catastrophic issue; this outbreak of cholera.”

On March 3, Akobo Commissioner raised concerns over the cholera crisis which he said had rapidly spread to cattle camps and villages amid critical shortages of medical supplies.

Puok Nyang Tutjiek testified that during a mission to the Ethiopian border, he learned of one cattle camp that had recorded an estimated of 178 cholera infections and three related deaths since February 28.

South Sudan first declared a cholera outbreak in October 2024 and 33,000 cases have been confirmed across the country, as health authorities still grapple with the situation, four months later.

This is despite the ministry’s recent insistence that the cholera outbreak was under control because the rate of infections was allegedly declining due to prevention measures and the availability of the oral vaccines.

At least two million cholera vaccines were donated to the country by global health agencies as part of international efforts to control the spread of the disease.