Crisis Alert: Cholera Outbreak in Sierra Leone

A severe cholera outbreak in Sierra Leone has taken at least 200 lives in Freetown, the capital, affecting Living Water staff and family. We need your help.

Over 12,000 cases of the disease have been reported to date, though government experts had expected the outbreak to peak at 6,000. With only one doctor per 34,744 citizens, according to United Nations figures, local health care officials are overwhelmed and need help. The crisis is even worse than the numbers indicate, as only a fraction of districts are reporting.

Our Work – Our Family

Living Water is part of Sierra Leone's Cholera Task Force, which meets weekly to address the crisis, which has hit hardest around Freetown where Living Water is based. The hygiene, sanitation, water access and disease treatment work Living Water International does in Sierra Leone every day is exactly what is needed to help contain the outbreak. We need your help to do more.

You can see more about our hygiene and sanitation work in Sierra Leone at last year's Choose Life campaign page. The hygiene teacher you see on the video there is Zainab Sesay, whose son was recently admitted to the hospital with dysentery. Mariatu, our Country Directors' 4-year-old daughter, came down with typhoid in the midst of the crisis, and other staff members and their families have fallen ill with cholera and other sicknesses. Our African Regional Vice President, Victor Madziakapita, Ph.D., is traveling to Sierra Leone to assess the situation. Please pray for our team.

Our Response

Living Water is already engaged in the first installment of a 3-phase response to the outbreak:

Phase I: Emergency relief measures As we describe below, we are investing $150,000 toward meeting immediate needs: providing water and sanitation services for cholera treatment units (CTUs), installing emergency latrines, doing more community training, chlorinating well that are contaminated, and rehabilitation those that are broken. Among all the organizations forming the Cholera Task Force, Living Water is the only one focused on rehabilitation -- a critical step in stemming the outbreak.

Phase II: Rehabilitation and recovery As the outbreak is contained, we will launch a recovery plan to help restore communities to health. Watch for more on this soon!

Phase III: Sustainable development In the long term, we will return to our core business of ensuring reliable access to safe drinking water, and hygiene and sanitation education, helping prevent the next crisis, doing it all to proclaim the gospel.

Our Needs

In addition to focusing our team's existing activities in water, sanitation, hygiene, and Christian witness in cholera-affected areas, we will also...

Scale up community engagement and training (hygiene, sanitation): $20,000

Provide water and sanitation services for 3 Cholera Treatment Units (CTUs): $50,000

• Water supply, infrastructure, treatment: $21,000 ($7,000 per CTU)
• 15 Emergency latrines: $26,000
• Monitoring & evaluation:$3,000 ($1,000 per CTU)

Perform emergency chlorination of (380) contaminated water points: $20,000

Rehabilitate non-functional water points: 20 @ $3,000 each: $60,000

Total additional funding needed: $150,000

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All funds raised through Pure Charity will be assigned directly to Living Water's cholera response efforts;