A CHOLERA epidemic was declared among Rwandan Hutu refugees in rebel held eastern Zaire yesterday.
The senior local official of the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced the epidemic after five cholera deaths on April 7th and 8th in the Kasese 2 refugee site, 29km (17 miles) south of Kisangani. About 50,000 Rwandan refugees are camped at Kasese, with a similar number in makeshift camps further south.
The outbreak is certain to delay plans to repatriate the 100,000 refugees, WHO official Mr Leonard Kinuani told Reuters by telephone from Kisangani.
"Up to April 9th in the Kasese 2 site we had recorded 120 cases requiring hospital treatment of whom five died," he said. "This formal declaration of an epidemic will delay the repatriation until it is brought under control."
The first flights had been expected in the next few days. But Mr Kinuani said it might take a month to declare the refugees cholera free.
We have to fear that there is the same cholera problem in the other sites," he said, adding that tests are continuing. The 10,000 strong local Zairean population is also at risk.
WHO and both Zairean and foreign doctors will isolate the sick and try to arrange 24 hour medical care in the camps, he said. Aid workers began last week trying to purify the water supply from a nearby river.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said yesterday that 93 deaths among the refugees south of Kisangani were reported on Friday, a high toll but down from 180 the previous Friday.
The refugees are the remainder of more than two million Rwandan Hutus who fled their country in July 1994, after the victory of Tutsi rebels in the civil war.
Most returned home late last year. But about 300,000 are believed to be stranded in Zaire, with the largest concentration between Kisangani and Ubundi, 125km (75 miles) to the south.
UNHCR is planning a hugely expensive airlift to repatriate the Hutus, who now say they want to go home.
The Zairean rebel leader, Mr Laurent Kabila, was put under international pressure this month to agree to the airlift, after earlier insisting that the refugees should travel by road. The roads are impassable for long stretches.
In what diplomats said was a gesture to help get Mr Kabila's a to the airlift, international relief agencies are flying internally displaced Zaireans back to their home towns in eastern Zaire from Kisangani.
Mr Kinuani said the type of cholera found among patients at Kasese 2 was inaba.
The refugees are in an appalling state after trekking about 600km (375 miles) since last October through dense jungle, where they survived on grubs and tree bark. They marched westwards further into Zaire to flee Mr Kabila's rebellion, which is supported by the Rwandan government.
But Mr Kabila now controls half of Zaire and the capture of Kisangani on March 15th led most refugees to agree to go home.
Chris McGreal adds from Lubumbashi:
Mr Kabila's three day truce to give President Mobutu Sese Seko the chance to resign and retire quietly to his village did not halt the insurgents' assault against the last pocket of government resistance in Lubumbashi yesterday.
The rebels seized control of the airport after a standoff interrupted by occasional battles with about 300 members of the president's personal regiment, after their officers fled in the only planes. The fate of the other members of the Official Presidential Division (DSP) was unclear.
For several hours the rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo Zaire halted its attack on the airport while the DSP troops tried in vain to persuade their leaders in the capital to send a plane to rescue them.