The World Health Organisation (WHO)has warned that more than 25,000 people in famine-threatened Somalia have been struck by cholera or acute watery diarrhoea, and the epidemic is expected to double in coming months by summer.
The fatality rate for the disease is put at over 2 percent with at least 524 deaths recorded.
Death rates among Somalis infected with cholera now reach 14.1 percent in Middle Juba and 5.1 percent in Bakool, U.N. spokesman Jens Laerke told a news briefing. Some 533 deaths linked to the outbreak have been reported in Somalia so far this year.
Some 500,000 Somalis have been internally displaced, many in search of water, as well as some 3 million pastoralists who have lost 70 percent of their livestock due to drought.
The United Nations says it is already racing to avoid a repeat of the 2011 famine in which more than 250,000 people died of starvation.
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