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Sierra Leone: Rampant disease washes in with flood water

22 Jul 2008

With malaria, diarrhea and vomiting, pneumonia, bronchitis and other respiratory infections, worm infestations, scabies, abscesses, sores, and boils all common ailments in the Kroo Bay community of the Sierra Leone capital Freetown local medical official Amadou Kandor says it's little wonder 35 is an average life expectancy for the slum's 6,000 inhabitants.

KROO BAY, 21 July 2008 (IRIN) - Kroo Bay, one of the poorest areas in the centre of Sierra Leone's beachfront capital Freetown, is a squalid slum so littered with rubbish that the paths are made of compressed plastic, cans and toothpaste tubes, and patches of bare orange earth are a rare sight.

Swarms of mosquitoes breed in pools of slimy green water, pigs and children play together in mounds of refuse. In one of the two rivers that flows past the densely packed tin and wood shelters, a bloated dead dog bobs on the surface just upstream of where people wash their clothes.

Kroo Bay's shockingly low life expectancy is even lower than Sierra Leone's national average of 45 - a major factor contributing to the country ranking last in the UN Development Programme annual survey of human development.

Read the full article here http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=79358