- Nimba County Senatorial Candidate Garrison Yealue claimed on a local radio station that the county has the highest cholera rate in Liberia.
- We have reviewed all the relevant data including the weekly report from the National Public Health Institute of Liberia
- There is no evidence to back his assertion that Nimba County has the highest number of cholera cases in the country
On April 3, Garrison Yealue, a Senatorial Candidate in the pending Nimba by-elections, claimed in a radio interview that the County has the highest cholera rate in Liberia, citing a source from the Ministry of Health.
The former Nimba County District #4 lawmaker made this claim on “Kergeheamahn Breakfast Show” — a community radio station in Nimba County – while discussing how Arcelol Mittal’s mining activities are polluting creeks, leaving residents exposed to diseases like cholera.
The claim
Mr. Yealue’s exact statement: “A friend of mine working at the Ministry of Health told me say the highest rate of Chloride is from Nimba.”
Rating Justification
To verify if Nimba County has reported the highest rate of Cholera cases, we searched the internet and found a 2019 cholera factsheet published by the “Cholera Platform”.
This fact-sheet was compiled by a multidisciplinary team under the Regional Cholera Platform, with contributions from WHO, UNICEF, MSF, IFRC, GTFCC, Liberia’s Ministry of Health, and the CDC, providing data to guide cholera prevention and control efforts through improved surveillance, outbreak response, vaccination, and water sanitation initiatives.
The fact sheet shows that Montserrado County had the highest number of suspected cholera cases, accounting for 67.5% of cases. Other counties included Rivercess (6.4%), Maryland (5.6%), and Nimba (4.1%) Counties.
We also searched the Ministry of Health’s official Facebook page and website and found no publicly available data on the cholera situation in Liberia.
Also, the National Public Health Institute of Liberia’s (NPHIL) Early Warning Disease Surveillance Bulletin, also known as Epi week, tracks disease trends weekly, does not show any cumulative case numbers for counties over the years.
In its 2025 Epi-Week 2, covering January 6 – 12, seven suspected cholera cases were reported, with five from Lofa County and two from Sinoe County.
The latest 2019-2020 Health and Demographic survey report gives no details about the cholera outbreaks in Liberia.
It is important to note that we have contacted Mr. Yealue to provide more details or evidence to support his claim, but he has not responded. We will update this report should he respond to our inquiry with new evidence.
Conclusion
Based on this finding, we conclude that Candidate Garrison Yealue’s claim that Nimba County has the highest cholera rate in Liberia is not backed by any available evidence.
The most recent available data shows that Montserrado County has accounted for the highest cases of cholera, while the latest data from NPHIL shows that Lofa County has reported five of the seven cases reported in January this year.
