The Israeli Ministry of Health has confirmed the presence of cholera bacteria in a reservoir of the Yarmuk River, in the north of the country and close to the Syrian border, and has announced the start of a containment protocol to avoid outbreaks of contagions such as those that have broken out in Syria and Lebanon.
Israeli health authorities have proceeded to chlorinate the reservoir and cut off the flow of its waters into the Kinneret, Israel’s largest freshwater lake.
In a statement reported by ‘The Times of Israel’, the Health Ministry assures that, for the moment, «no danger to public health has been identified» although «it is following up on possible sources of contamination» such as the Hasbani River in Lebanon.
The Israeli Ministry of Health has assured that it has already informed the Palestinian government and Jordan of the situation.
The Syrian origin of the finding is of particular concern to the Israeli government given the serious impact of cholera in the neighboring country where, according to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, the outbreak declared at the end of August has left at least 92 dead and some 35,500 cases up to 9 November.
The Lebanese Ministry of Health, for its part, has already recorded 513 infections since the outbreak last month of the first outbreak in 30 years in the country, although the number of deaths has remained stable at 18 for the last eleven days and the number of people admitted to hospital continues to fall with each passing day, from 82 to 70 since last Thursday.
