Cholera Epidemic In The Coastal Slums Of West Africa

A little over two years ago in West Africa, Cholera was sweeping through the coastal slums. During the summer of 2012, heavy rains came and flooded the shantytowns in the capitals of Sierra Leone and neighboring Guinea. In these countries, around two-thirds of the population lacked toilets. Without toilets, the people were forced to use the restroom in rivers, and other surrounding areas that contaminated their drinking water. Cholera is spread through contact of contaminated feces, and with people drinking and children swimming in this water, the number of people infected continued to grow. At this time 13,000 people were already suffering from this disease, many had been admitted to hospitals, and 250 to 300 people had died. The government declared it a national emergency, while aid workers in Guinea said it was unlikely to have reached its peak. Along with the Cholera outbreak getting worse, both countries had endured years of civil and political unrest, with Sierra Leone recovering from a decade of bloody civil war which drove thousands of people from rural areas into the city's slums, and with Guinea emerging from a half-century of brutal dictatorship. I think that these hardship affected the Cholera outbreak tremendously. Maybe if Guinea had not have had a dictatorship and Sierra Leone had not just come out of war, the money might have been there to put in sewage systems, and get their people clean drinking water. So I am asking you, as a reader, what you think could have been done to prevent the number of infections and deaths.

Nossiter, Adam. "Cholera Epidemic Envelops Coastal Slums in West Africa."The New York Times. The New York Times, 22 Aug. 2012. Web. 02 Nov. 2014. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/world/africa/cholera-epidemic-envelops-coastal-slums-in-west-africa.html?_r=0