Cholera kills 16, medical charity MSF calls for help

Cholera has killed 16 people in three camps in Nigeria housing over one million people who have fled the Boko Haram insurgency, the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Thursday, calling on other aid agencies to help it respond.

Almost 200 people have been admitted to MSF's 100-bed cholera treatment centre in Maiduguri, capital of northern Nigeria’s Borno State, since September 15, the charity said in a statement.

More than two million people have been uprooted in northern Nigeria since Boko Haram launched an uprising in 2009 aimed at creating an Islamic state in the northeast of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation.

MSF and the International Committee of the Red Cross are the only international organisations that have responded to emergencies in Borno State in recent years, MSF said.

"We need more support," Chibuzo Okonta, emergency projects manager for MSF in Paris, said in the statement.

"We have repeatedly called on other humanitarian organisations to assist displaced people in Borno state, and once again we issue this appeal, which until now has gone unanswered."

Cholera can be fatal if not treated, though most patients recover if treated promptly with oral rehydration therapy.

MSF said the first cholera case was reported one month ago, and two-thirds of the 187 patients it had admitted were in a serious state.

The disease spreads easily in crowded camps with poor sanitation. MSF treated over 4,000 displaced people with cholera in Borno State in September 2014.