With a relatively simple treatment regime, however, patients on the brink of death seem to be miraculously cured, and the mortality rate of cholera can be reduced dramatically. Most patients can be treated adequately by being given a solution of oral-rehydration salts. However, if they have become severely dehydrated, victims must be given fluids intravenously, and an effective antibiotic. But, in Mogadishu, nothing is simple. Ten years after the collapse of the former government, the capital is in ruins, with piles of rubbish in the streets, no system of sanitation, and no piped water.
Many people live in makeshift housing, ruined buildings, and camps for the internally displaced.
Security is poor. Even with the recent establishment of a new interim government, some areas of the city are still controlled by opposition, clan-based leaders. Aid workers dealing with the present outbreak in north Mogadishu were pulled out in an emergency evacuation after being pinned down during a two-hour gun battle on 28 March. MSF announced the next day that it had been forced to suspend its operations in the capital, and warned that cholera victims were now at risk of dying. During the attack on the MSF compound, medical supplies were looted and destroyed.