Cholera kills 170 in Sudan

A new cholera outbreak in Sudan has killed 172 people and sickened more than 2,500 over the past week, authorities said Tuesday as a leading medical group warned that the country's existing health facilities were unable to cope with the surge of patients.

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The bulk of the cases were reported in the capital, Khartoum, and its twin city of Omdurman, but cholera was also detected in the provinces of North Kordofan, Sennar, Gazira, White Nile, and Nile River, health officials said.

According to Joyce Bakker, the Sudan coordinator for Doctors Without Borders — also known as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF — the alarming spike began in mid-May, with MSF teams treating almost 2,000 suspected cholera cases in the past week alone.