Due to a nationwide outbreak of cholera and other food-borne diseases like diarrhea, health officials on Thursday said a northern Vietnamese province has banned wedding banquets in restaurants and hotels.

Nguyen Trong Quynh, chief of the provincial People's Committee, said Thanh Hoa province had imposed a temporary ban on serving food at wedding parties and funerals

Representatives of the United Nations from different levels started monitoring the affected sites where viral cholera was found among the patients of diarrhea in Saptari district of Nepal.

The U.N. took the measure after the diarrhea spread throughout the district claimed 34 lives. The monitoring teams in the affected sites include UN officer Leath Beaker, Dr. Sarvesh Jha from UNFPA, Uma Adhikari from UNICEF among others, the ekantipure.com, a local news portal, reported

The Nepalese government on Wednesday sounded the alarm on the recurring diarrhea outbreak in the region, with over 200 people killed and 16,162 cases reported in the first six months of the year alone.

According to Dr. Manas Kumar Banerjee, project coordinator of Avian Influenza Control Project under the Epidemiology and Disease Control Unit (EDCU), the government would implement a massive campaign and operational research throughout the region to determine the causes behind the "focal epidemic

Diarrhea outbreak has killed 20 people in the country's mid-western remote district, Kalikot, during over the week, local media reported.

Some those who died had also developed symptoms of cholera, according to reports

Health officials have expressed alarm over a possible outbreak of dysentery, following the death of two more people last Wednesday.

This brought the total number of deaths to 18 from dysentery with 16 of the victims dying over the past two months