A minor cholera outbreak in Thailand has been brought under control, with only a small number of Myanmar and Thai patients diagnosed with the disease — characterised by severe diarrhoea — and cured already, public health and local security authorities said on Wednesday.
The number of patients with cholera in Myanmar’s Shwe Kokko town is also declining, they added.
Even though Mae Sot and four other districts of the northern border province of Tak have been declared cholera control red zones due to their high risk of encountering new cases, the situation now is not very severe, said Dr Ramet Wongwilairat, director of Mae Sot Hospital.
Cholera now ranks 53rd on Thailand’s list of 57 communicable diseases under surveillance.
So far, a total of four patients, two Thais and two Myanmar nationals, have been diagnosed with cholera and fully treated. There have not been any new cases apart from three asymptomatic cholera cases, said Dr Suphachok Wetchaphanphesat, a public health inspector.
These three asymptomatic cases, which were detected recently along with the four symptomatic cases, comprised two Myanmar nationals and one Thai, he added.
“We need to continue maintaining proper cholera surveillance measures, particularly during the New Year celebrations when people usually have a festive feast, which may potentially heighten the risk of them contracting this food-borne disease,” he said.
As such, various measures are being implemented in Tak to help cut the risk of cholera spreading through food, including improving sanitation standards at fresh markets and public toilets and the hygiene standards of street food vendors, he said.
The two health officials, as well as Dr Sopon Iamsirithaworn, a public health chief inspector and spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), also played down the furore over the World Health Organization’s (WHO) announcement that cholera is a new major health emergency.
They said the purpose of reclassifying this disease is only to raise international awareness about an upsurge in cholera cases in several countries and urge action to curb them. A border security official who declined to be named said that from Dec 1 until Dec 27, Shwe Kokko reported 761 cholera cases which required treatment in hospital, while the latest update on the cholera outbreak there showed only 40 cholera patients were still receiving treatment in hospital.
On Monday, a Thai health team was dispatched to Shwe Kokko to help Myanmar contain the cholera outbreak while delivering more oral rehydration solutions (ORS) and other medicines to Myanmar healthcare workers to treat the disease.
