Wajir kala-azar outbreak: 20 now dead as county gov’t appeals for help

The death toll from the kala-azar outbreak in Wajir County has risen to 20, with two more deaths reported.

The number of those admitted at the Wajir Referral Hospital from the disease continues to rise.

Kala-azar, which started spreading in December last year, has left hundreds infected and tens hospitalized in various health facilities in the county.

“Most of the patients who have lost their lives are patients who were brought when they were sick, very very ill. There was a child who was admitted and within thirty minutes, most of them succumb,” says Habiba Ali, Wajir’s CEC for Health.

The disease has been spreading in the four sub-counties of Wajir, affecting the elderly and the young.

The disease causes irregular bouts of fever, weight loss, enlarged spleens and livers and anaemia.

“The most affected are the children under the age of five that is why we are getting high case fatalities. Children have low immunity and can’t fight invasive infections,” adds Ali.

With each passing day, the disease’s burden continues to grow, forcing the county’s referral hospital to improvise to provide extra bed space to cater for the patients' overflow.

The county is also running low on blood for supply, an important tool in the management of the disease.

But even as the county races to contain the cases, the challenge of testing persists.

Wajir Governor Ahmed Abdilahi says, “The test kits are very specialized you have to get them from Netherlands, then there is the curative aspect which is spraying where the insects reside.”

The county has deployed fifty community health workers to the most affected counties of Eldas and Wajir West for a mass fumigation exercise aimed at tackling the problem at the source.

The disease is spread through bites from sandflies. Beyond the fumigation, the county is also carrying out sensitization programmes on the disease.