Angola’s Ministry of Health (MINSA) declared a cholera outbreak on Friday evening, confirming 12 deaths since the first case was reported on Tuesday.
As of 6 p.m. local time on Friday, the country had recorded 119 cholera cases, with 14 confirmed through laboratory tests. An additional 12 samples were still under analysis.
Over the past 24 hours, 24 new cases were identified, with 20 of them concentrated in Cacuaco Municipality, the epicenter of the outbreak. Cacuaco, located in Angola’s capital province of Luanda, has a population of more than 1.2 million people.
Of the 119 reported cases, 53% are female and 47% male. Eleven of the 12 deaths have occurred in Cacuaco.
The Ministry’s bulletin defined a cholera case as any patient with severe dehydration or death due to acute watery diarrhea, with or without vomiting, in individuals over age 2 in areas where cholera is present. A confirmed case is one in which the cholera bacteria have been isolated from stool samples.
The timeline in the bulletin indicated that symptoms in the first patient were observed on December 31, 2024.