Comoros launches vax drive after 134 cholera deaths

Moroni: The Comoros launched a cholera vaccination drive on Thursday, according to health officials, four months after an outbreak that has killed 134 people.

More than 1,300 children received an oral dose of vaccine on the first day of the campaign on Anjouan, the poorest of the three islands of the Indian Ocean nation.

Anjouan has been the worst hit of the islands and is the closest to the French overseas territory of Mayotte, which has itself seen two deaths since March.

The outbreak is thought to have arrived in the Comoros in February by boat from Tanzania on the African mainland, where the disease is endemic.

Cholera is an acute intestinal infection that spreads through contaminated food and water. It typically causes severe diarrhoea, vomiting and muscle cramps -- and sometimes death.