A CHOLERA outbreak in a southern Sudanese city has killed nearly 60 people and sickened about 1,300 others over the last three days, health authorities said on Saturday.

The outbreak in Kosti was blamed mainly on contaminated drinking water after the city’s water supply facility was knocked out during an attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the health ministry said. 

The RSF has been fighting the country’s military for nearly two years.

The ministry said the disease killed 58 people and sickened 1,293 others between Thursday and Saturday.

It has taken a series of measures to fight the outbreak, including launching a vaccination campaign against cholera in the city, which lies on the west bank of the White Nile river.

The ministry said it also expanded the capacity of an isolation centre in co-operation with the United Nations and international medical groups.

Doctors Without Borders said its cholera treatment centre in the Kosti hospital has been overwhelmed, prompting health authorities to use adult and paediatric emergency rooms to provide additional space to treat stricken patients.

“The situation is really alarming and is about to get out of control,” said Dr Francis Layoo Ocan, the group’s medical co-ordinator in Kosti. 

Dr Ocan added: “We’ve run out of space, and we are now admitting patients in an open area and treating them on the floor because there are not enough beds.”

Cholera killed more than 600 people in Sudan between July and October last year, mostly in the country’s eastern areas where millions of people displaced by conflict were located. 

The war in Sudan has killed more than 24,000 people and driven over 14 million people — about 30 per cent of the population — from their homes, according to the UN.