ADDIS ABABA , Ethiopia (AFP) — At least 31 people have died from more than 1,500 cholera cases in Ethiopia’s Gambella region over the past month, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned Friday, saying the outbreak is “rapidly spreading”.

The international NGO said the situation has worsened with the arrival of people fleeing violence in neighbouring South Sudan.

“Cholera is rapidly spreading across western Ethiopia and in parallel, the outbreak in South Sudan is ongoing, endangering thousands of lives,” MSF said in a statement.

Several regions of Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation with around 120 million people, are battling cholera outbreaks, with Amhara — its second-largest region — among the hardest hit.

Cholera is an acute intestinal infection spread through food and water contaminated with the vibrio cholerae bacterium, often of fecal origin.

In South Sudan’s Akobo County, located in the Upper Nile region, 1,300 cholera cases have been reported in the past four weeks, according to MSF.

It said recent violence in Upper Nile between the South Sudanese government and armed groups is “worsening the outbreak”.

“Thousands are being displaced, losing access to healthcare, safe water, and sanitation,” MSF said.

South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation and still hit by chronic instability and poverty, declared a cholera epidemic in October.

The World Health Organization says some 4,000 people died from the “preventable and easily treatable disease” in 2023, up 71 percent on the previous year, mostly in Africa.