Cholera in Mayotte: infectious disease specialist Benjamin Davido fears other deaths "in the coming days"
“What we can hope is that there are no other deaths in the days to come. I fear that unfortunately this will be the case”, declared Thursday May 9 on franceinfo infectious disease specialist Benjamin Davido after a three-year-old child died of cholera in Mayotte. This is a first since the start of the epidemic in the 101st French department.
“If unfortunately, ring vaccination [des cas contacts] is not enough to control things in the coming days, we can quickly find ourselves with 100 cases then 1,000 cases and therefore, incompressibly, things can go quickly and the symbolic figure of a death can quickly transform “, he explains. “What we’re going to need is to be able to clean the water and have structures. The good news is that things are getting organized. We want to think and hope that the Mahorais will be able to benefit from aid, largely from the mainland and that we will be able to curb an epidemic”he adds.
Can this epidemic reach mainland France? “I don’t believe it much.”, replies Benjamin Davido. “Sporadic cases of importation are possible, but we are on something insular which largely protects us from seeing this epidemic appear in a cataclysmic way and above all, we have the health network and everything that goes well with it. “. The Minister of Health Frédéric Valletoux is going to Mayotte on Thursday and Friday. The latest report from the regional health agency (ARS) dated May 6 shows 58 cases of cholera identified. The first cases were recorded in mid-March among migrants particularly from the neighboring Comoros.
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