The risk of a cholera outbreak in Lebanon is “very high”, the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday, after a case of an acute and potentially fatal diarrheal infection was reported in the conflict-hit country.
WHO has highlighted the risk of cholera spreading among thousands of displaced people as Israel stepped up an air campaign against Hezbollah and launched a ground offensive aimed at pushing the group back from its northern border with Lebanon.
“If the cholera outbreak … spreads among newly displaced people, it could spread very rapidly,” Abdinasir Abubakar, WHO representative in Lebanon, told reporters in an online news conference.
Lebanon’s health ministry said a case of cholera has been confirmed in a Lebanese citizen who went to hospital on Monday suffering from watery diarrhea and dehydration.
The patient, from Ammounieh in northern Lebanon, had no travel history, the ministry said.
Lebanon faces its first outbreak of cholera in 30 years between 2022 and 2023, mainly in the north of the country.
According to WHO, the disease, which causes severe diarrhea, vomiting and muscle cramps, usually occurs by eating or drinking food or water contaminated with the bacteria.
Abubakar said the UN health agency has been warning for months that the disease could reemerge amid “deteriorating water and sanitation” among the displaced and their host communities.
The number of displaced people had already risen last month since Hezbollah opened fire across the border with Israel last year, saying it was reacting to Israel’s war on Gaza.
While people in northern Lebanon were only recently exposed or vaccinated, Aboubakar cautioned that some communities from southern Lebanon and the Beirut area have not built up any immunity to cholera for three decades.
He warned that “the risk of spread is very high” if the disease spread to those populations.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters the agency had strengthened “surveillance and conduct tracing, including environmental monitoring and water sampling.”
In August, the Lebanese Health Ministry launched an oral cholera vaccination campaign targeting 350,000 people living in high-risk areas, but the campaign had been “disrupted by an increase in violence,” he said.
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