Conference Abstract | Volume 9 (ConfPro8): Abstract 77 | Published: 10 Oct 2026
Fernando Narciso Gregório Nioca1,&, Leopoldina Augusto Mouzinho2, Maria António Castelo1
1Faculty of Medicine of the Agostinho Neto University (FMUAN), Luanda, Angola; 2Bishop Emilio de Carvalho Hospital, Luanda, Angola
&Corresponding author: Fernando Narciso Gregório Nioca, Faculty of Medicine of the Agostinho Neto University (FMUAN), Email: bucasabinioca@gmail.com, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-1237-2905
Received: 11 Mar, Accepted: 30 Aug 2026, Published: 10 Oct 2026
Domain: Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Keywords: Cholera, risk factors, basic sanitation, Benguela, Angola
©Fernando Narciso Gregório Nioca et al. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health (ISSN: 2664-2824). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Cite this article: Fernando Narciso Gregório Nioca et al. Socio-environmental and behavioral risk factors of cholera in residents of the Utomba neighborhood, Benguela, Angola, April 2026. Journal of Interventional Epidemiology and Public Health. 2026;9(ConfPro8):77. https://doi.org/10.37432/JIEPH-CONFPRO8-0077
Angola has been facing a cholera epidemic since January 2025, having accumulated 40.688 cases until May 26, 2026. Benguela province is the second most affected, with 7.199 cases (17,7%). The Utomba neighbourhood in Benguela began notifying cholera cases only from April 25, 2026, having accumulated 16 cases and two deaths until May 26, 2026. Given this situation, there is an urgent need to take measures to contain the outbreak in the neighbourhood. This study aimed to characterize the socio-environmental and behavioural risk factors associated with cholera transmission in order to provide support for planning outbreak control measures.
This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted with a sample of 180 households in the Utomba neighborhood, selected by two-stage sampling (simple random and systematic). Data collection was carried out through interviews with family households and analyzed using SPSS software, version 26.
The results revealed 73,9% of houses built of adobe and 48,3% of heads of families without any formal education. Almost half of the families (45,6%) depend on tanks supplied by water trucks and 19,5% consume water directly from unsafe environmental sources, such as rivers (12,8%) and hand-dug wells (cacimbas) (6,7%). Eight out of 10 families (81,7%) do not perform any type of water treatment or purification before consumption. Additionally, 40,5% of the households practice open defecation, perpetuating the cycle of environmental contamination.
The data reveal high socio-environmental vulnerability, with a strong risk of cholera transmission sustained by exposure to unsafe water sources and inadequate sanitation practices. Therefore, it is urgent to strengthen control measures such as water chlorination and community awareness/education, as well as to move towards structural interventions in sanitation and access to safe water to break the environmental fecal-oral cycle.
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