The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the continent’s chief health advisory body, has tied the worst outbreak of cholera in three years to climate change, saying adverse weather is raising the risk of this disease faster than in the rest of the world.

That’s as floods in Democratic Republic of Congo — and across much of southern Africa — stretch already fragile health systems, limit access to safe water and sanitation and force people from their homes.

“Cholera in Africa is a climate change issue,” said Jean Kaseya, director general of Addis Ababa-based Africa CDC. 

Outbreaks of cholera have swept across more than a dozen countries in the region over the past year, causing hundreds of deaths from rural Zambia to the outskirts of the capital of South Africa, the continent’s most developed nation.

Read more: time.com

Photo: time.com