• Cases are increasing as a result of the nasty disease’s transfer from Syria.
• The epidemic has claimed at least five lives in the economically ruined nation.
• Health officials have laid the blame for the people’s weak and failing sanitary infrastructure on the nation’s financial and political challenges.

A fatal cholera outbreak is “expanding swiftly,” according to a warning from Lebanon. Cases are increasing as a result of the nasty disease’s transfer from Syria, which lies next door.

The epidemic, which has claimed at least five lives in the economically ruined nation, is the first since 1993. Health officials have laid the blame for the people’s weak and failing sanitary infrastructure on the nation’s financial and political challenges.

On Wednesday, interim Minister of Public Health Firass Abiad informed reporters that “the virus is growing swiftly in Lebanon.”

According to the health ministry, 169 cases of cholera have been reported in Lebanon since October 6, with over half occurring in the last two days.

The most recent crisis comes after three years of Lebanon experiencing unheard-of economic hardship and an inability to police porous borders with neighboring, conflict-torn Syria, where an outbreak is growing after more than ten years of hostilities.

The patient, a Syrian national, was getting treatment and was in stable condition, according to Abiad, who also noted that the first case in Lebanon was discovered on October 5 in the isolated northern Lebanese region of Akkar.

Health officials “have started to see an increase in cases among the Lebanese,” he continued, adding that while the “great majority” of cases involved Syrian refugees.

More than a million Syrian refugees are currently living in Lebanon, many of them are already impoverished and living in overcrowded camps for the displaced without running water or sewage facilities. This is true even before Lebanon’s economic collapse started.

Crowded camps are high-risk regions because of a lack of cleanliness, according to Zeina Khodr of Al Jazeera, who was reporting from Akkar, Lebanon.

Cases have since moved to impoverished areas where drinking water is heavily contaminated and occasionally combined with sewage, rather than being restricted to camps along Syria’s border.

Cholera typically results in vomiting and diarrhea and is spread by contaminated food or water.

It can also spread in residential areas without sufficient sewage systems or access to mains-fed water.

According to Abiad, the disease was transferred to fruits and vegetables when tainted water was utilized for agriculture.

The healthcare sector in Lebanon has been severely impacted by a three-year financial crisis as well as the August 2020 Beirut port explosion, which destroyed vital medical equipment in the country’s capital and left Lebanon’s water infrastructure in disrepair.

Abiad claimed that despite assistance from donor nations, the sector would find it difficult to handle a widespread outbreak.

Syria’s first waterborne illness outbreak since 2009 is thought to have originated in the Euphrates River, but cholera has since spread across the country, with thousands of suspected or confirmed cases being recorded.

Nearly two-thirds of Syria’s water treatment facilities, half of its pumping stations, and one-third of its water towers have been damaged, according to the UN.

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