“Our staff on the ground have seen the elderly, women and children struggling to survive while their flimsy shelters are knee-high full of stagnant water,” said Victor Moses, Somalia country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, a charity.

“With limited access to proper toilets and clean water, it’s a ticking time bomb for disease outbreaks like cholera and malaria.”

Rising water levels in the camp have forced many of its inhabitants to abandon their shelters and seek refuge in schools. Meanwhile, pit latrines in the camp are overflowing, resulting in raw sewage swilling through the camp.

Aid workers say they are already seeing an increase in Acute Watery Diarrhoea and fear that a cholera outbreak could be imminent.

Parts of north eastern Kenya have seen the heaviest recorded rain in two decades. More than 150,000 people have been forced to flee after the River Tana burst its banks. With more rain expected, local police ordered the forcible evacuation of vulnerable villages.

“Those who resist will be prosecuted for attempted suicide,” Michael Kioni, the deputy county commissioner for the Tana River, was quoted as saying by Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.

The Kenyan army and Red Cross were forced to mount a major operation last week to rescue 3,000 people marooned by another flooded river, the Galana-Sabaki, which destroyed a number of tourist camps in Kenya’s Tsavo East National Park, one of the country’s largest.

More than 200,000 people have been left homeless by the floods, according to the Red Cross, devastating the livelihoods of many smallholder farmers by ruining their crops and carrying away their livestock.

Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/cholera-epidemic-fears-somalia-kenya-severe-flooding-forces/