Diphtheria cases spiralling in Somalia, health officials warn

Diphtheria, a highly contagious and deadly bacterial disease that mainly affects children, is preventable by a vaccine.

While Somalia has improved vaccination rates in recent years, medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) blames the current uptick on persisting immunisation gaps in the impoverished nation long plagued by conflict.

"The number of recorded cases of children sick with diphtheria has increased across the regions in the whole country," said Abdulrazaq Yusuf Ahmed, director of Mogadishu's Demartino public hospital.

"We have received about 49 patients in the whole of 2024 but this year, 2025, we have received 497 diphtheria cases during the last four months alone," he said.

Deaths rose from 13 to 42, with more female patients admitted than male, according to a report by Ahmed's hospital earlier this month.

The report by the primary national referral hospital described the resurgence as "one of the most urgent and dangerous threats to public health".

Earlier this month, the ministry of health said it had recorded 1,616 cases and 87 deaths from the disease so far this year.

"We are seeing a rapid increase in diphtheria among children under 15 in central Somalia," said MSF's Somalia medical coordinator Frida Athanassiadis, adding that thwy account for roughly 97 percent of cases.

"Low vaccination coverage, vaccine hesitancy and poor living conditions are driving the spread," Athanassiadis told AFP, with preventing deaths possible only by ensuring access to medicine and vaccines.

Athanassiadis said in some medical centres, basic resources including staffing, space and equipment were "insufficient to cope with rising caseloads".

She did not attribute the outbreak to a "single donor or decision" but rather to the long-standing pattern of low vaccination rates, generating a pool of unprotected children.

MSF said while teams initially had a small "emergency" stock of the antitoxin, it has "now been exhausted", with the ministry of health and the World Health Organisation helping to distribute the "limited available stock based on needs".

- 'Many children' -

In July, international charity Save the Children also warned that since April cases of measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, cholera and severe respiratory infections in Somalia have doubled from roughly 22,600 to over 46,000.

Around 60 percent of the cases are children under five, it said.

"The sharp rise in vaccine preventable diseases is linked to the recent aid cuts, which have impacted the health system'diphtheriadiphtherias capacity to deliver essential services, including routine immunization," the NGO said.

In Mogadishu, resident Abdiwahid Ali said "many children in my neighbourhood are sick, some of them hospitalised".

Anab Hassan, a grocer and mother-of-three, said people were "concerned" about the outbreak.

"A friend of mine lost a five-year-old daughter who was diagnosed with diphtheria, and several others told me their children are sick and coughing," she told AFP.

"We hear about children getting sick every day," she said.

READ MORE