Field Update
Inside the cholera response: 40 days in the Lake Chad basin
A field report from the team that set up seven treatment centres in five weeks, and what the outbreak revealed about the water infrastructure underneath it.
9 min read
By the time we arrived, the district hospital had been running a cholera ward out of a corridor for eleven days. The staff had not been paid in two months and were still there. That is the part of an outbreak response that does not photograph well and matters more than anything we brought with us.
Seven treatment centres in five weeks is a logistics achievement, and it is also an admission of failure. Cholera is a water problem wearing a medical costume. Every oral rehydration point we opened was a place where a functioning water system should have made our presence unnecessary.
We are staying in three of the seven districts to work on exactly that, alongside the WASH team. The other four have been handed to the regional health authority with six months of supplies and a maintenance budget.
Work like this is funded almost entirely by monthly gifts from individuals.
Support our work