Maguindanao cholera outbreak confirmed

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Health officials have confirmed, based on the latest laboratory tests, that it was indeed cholera that has afflicted 67 villagers, 51 of them children, in a fishing community on Bongo Island in Maguindanao.

Dr. Kadil Sinolinding Jr., Health secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said stool samples taken from the victims tested positive for cholera.

An elderly woman and a three-year-old child reportedly died from the outbreak in Tuka Marur in Bongo, some five kilometers off Parang town in the first district of Maguindanao.

Sinolinding said water from deep wells turned murky amid heavy rains three days before the victims started complaining of painful abdominal spasms and loose bowel movement.