Nurse Amir Rashid at a cholera ward in Bebnine, Akkar governorate, with a young patient. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
BEIRUT — Lebanon on Monday recorded no new cholera cases and no new deaths related to the disease in the previous 24 hours, the Health Ministry said in its daily report published on Tuesday morning.
According to the report, Lebanon has recorded a total of 658 cases and 23 deaths since the beginning of the cholera outbreak in early October. This outbreak is the country's first since 1993.
Last Wednesday, caretaker Health Minister Firass Abiad said that the cholera vaccine has been administered to 500,000 people out of the 600,000 targeted by the vaccination campaign launched last month. He also said that the disease "is under control."
The health minister's statements came shortly after the Litani River Authority, a public water institution, announced it had found cholera in four out of 10 samples collected in the Bekaa from a source in Chtoura, as well as from the Berdawni River in Zahle and in Marj near a Syrian refugee encampment.
The LRA linked the contamination to "the discharge of untreated wastewater," highlighting that the disease was present in areas "downstream from camps for displaced Syrians, sewage outlets or hospitals."