The number of cholera cases in Mayotte is now approaching 200, according to a new report communicated Friday June 21 by the French health agency, the day after a world summit on vaccine production in Africa where Emmanuel Macron called for “return cholera in the past tense.
“As of June 18, 2024, 193 cases of cholera were reported in Mayotte”, including 172 acquired locally and 21 “imported from the Comoros or countries on the African continent”, indicates Public Health France in a weekly epidemiological update. Over a week, 27 new cases were reported, including 17 on June 18 alone, “the day after gatherings on the occasion of (a) religious festival”, adds the agency.
Since the start of the epidemic, two deaths, including that of a three-year-old girl, have been recorded in the archipelago of around 320,000 inhabitants. Mayotte currently has three active foci of cholera transmission, all in the commune of Mamoudzou. A new outbreak was detected in the Doujani district, the day after gatherings for the religious festival, according to the agency.
“The ongoing community transmission of cholera in the commune of Mamoudzou, and the risk of importing new cases from Africa or the Comoros, where the situation is still not under control, particularly in Anjouan, expose Mayotte to a risk of local transmission in the short and long term throughout the territory”, SPF alert.
This risk is “particularly high in the most precarious neighborhoods, as long as access to drinking water and sanitation is not satisfactory.” The neighboring Comoros archipelago, affected for four months by the cholera epidemic, has recorded 134 deaths and 8,734 cumulative cases, according to a report made public on June 13 by local health authorities.
“Send cholera back to the past”
Emmanuel Macron called on Thursday to “send cholera to the past”, while an epidemic is hitting “half of Africa hard” and the French department of Mayotte, neighboring the Comoros, is also “affected”. The French president announced that a “production line for vaccines against cholera could be deployed in Africa” by the South African laboratory Biovac, whose investments will be supported on a “priority basis” by a new financial mechanism.
Until now, the South Korean EuBiologics is the only supplier of oral vaccines. The French Sanofi stopped its production at the end of 2022. France has been the subject of criticism for not having taken the necessary measures, mainly for access to drinking water, in order to avoid a cholera epidemic on its own territory, in Mayotte.