JOHANNESBURG—The death toll from a cholera outbreak in Malawi has crossed 1,300, a senior Malawian health official said on Thursday, as the southern African country battles its deadliest outbreak yet.
As of Wednesday, Malawi had recorded 40,284 cholera cases and 1,316 deaths in an outbreak that started in March 2022, with the country averaging over 500 new cases every day, Charles Mwansambo told a briefing organized by the World Health Organisation’s Africa office.
Cholera outbreaks happen regularly in Malawi, usually in the rainy season from November to March, but they only average an annual death toll of about 100.
The WHO said in a statement on Thursday that Malawi’s current outbreak was the deadliest on record, worse than ones in 1998/99 and 2001/02 that saw 860 and 968 deaths respectively….