Here’s a look at cholera, an acute diarrheal illness which kills thousands of people worldwide each year.
Facts:
Cholera is contracted by consuming food or water contaminated with the fecal bacteria Vibrio cholerae.
Dehydration from rapid loss of body fluids is the reason the disease can be so deadly if the patient is not treated.
The disease’s short incubation period of two hours to five days increases the likelihood of outbreaks.
80% of cholera cases can be treated and resolved with oral hydration salts.
There are three two-dose oral cholera vaccines available, Dukoral, Shanchol and Euvichol,but it may take weeks for an individual to have full protection.
Cholera is rare in industrialized nations.
People who live in areas with poor or inadequate water treatment, sanitation and hygiene practices are more likely to get the disease.
Statistics:
2017 – 1,227,391 reported cases in 34 countries with 5,654 deaths.
— In the United States there were 11 cases and no deaths.
2016 – 132,121 reported cases in 38 countries with 2,420 deaths.
— In the United States there were 14 cases and no deaths.
2015 – 172,454 reported cases in 42 countries with 1,304 deaths.
— In the United States there were four cases and no deaths.
2014 – 190,549 reported cases in 42 countries with 2,231 deaths.
— In the United States there were seven cases with no deaths.
2013 – 129,064 reported cases in 47 countries with 2,102 deaths.
— In the United States there were 14 cases with no deaths.
2012 – 245,393 reported cases in 48 countries with 3,034 deaths.
— In the United States there were 18 cases with no deaths.
2011 – 589,854 reported cases in 58 countries with 7,816 deaths.
— In Haiti there were 340,311 cases.
— In the United States there were 42 cases with no deaths.
2010 – 317,534 reported cases in 48 countries with 7,543 deaths.
— In Haiti there were 179,379 cases.
— In the United States there were 15 cases with no deaths.
2009 – 221,226 reported cases in 45 countries with 4,946 deaths.
— In Zimbabwe there were 68,153 cases.
— In the United States there were 10 cases with no deaths.
2008 – 190,130 reported cases in 56 countries with 5,143 deaths.
— In Zimbabwe there were 60,055 cases.
— In the United States there were five cases with no deaths.
Timeline:
1817 – The first pandemic begins in India, a place where cholera has existed for centuries.
1820 – More than 100,000 people die on the island of Java in Indonesia.
1820s – The disease spreads east to the Philippines and west to Turkey and Africa.
1821 – In Basra, Iraq, approximately 18,000 people die in a three-week period.
1829 – The second pandemic begins in India.
1830 – Cholera reaches Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia, its first appearance in Europe.
1832 – Cholera reaches the Western Hemisphere. In June, more than 1,000 people die in Quebec, Canada. More than 5,000 people die in New Orleans.
1852 – The third pandemic begins in India.
1854 – More than 23,000 people in Great Britain die.
1863 – The fourth pandemic begins in India.
1877-1879 – Approximately 90,000 people die in Japan.
1881 – The fifth pandemic begins in India.
1884 – The disease kills more than 5,000 people in Naples, Italy.
1885 – More than 60,000 people die in two Spanish provinces.
1893-1894 – Approximately 200,000 people die in Russia.
1899 – The sixth pandemic begins in India.
1907-1908 – More than 20,000 pilgrims die of cholera during the Hajj to Mecca.
1923 – The sixth pandemic ends and cholera disappears from most of the world, except India.
1961 – The seventh pandemic begins on the Indonesian island of Celebes. It spreads throughout Asia during the 1960s.
1970s – Cholera reaches Africa for the first time in 70 years.
1991 – The disease appears in Latin America (Peru) for the first time in 100 years. Approximately 3,000 people die.
1994 – Cholera breaks out in Rwandan refugee camps near Goma, Zaire. Tens of thousands of people die within a month.
2008-2009 – An estimated 4,200 people die in Zimbabwe.
October 2010 – Cholera breaks out in Haiti, and more than 6,600 people die within a year. As of April 2018, The United Nations says 818,000 cases of cholera and 9,757 deathsattributed to cholera have been reported in Haiti since the beginning of the 2010 outbreak.
July 2011 – According to a US Centers for Disease Control and Preventionreport, United Nations peacekeepers from Nepalmost likely caused the October 2010 cholera epidemic.
July 2012 – Cholera breaks out in Cuba for the first time in more than 100 years.
August 28, 2012 – Cuba’s government declares the cholera outbreak, that inflected 417 and killed three, eradicated.
January 15, 2013 – The Cuban Health Ministry reports51 new cases of cholera in Havana.
2013 – An outbreak in Mexico leads to 159 confirmed cases of cholera.
October 10, 2013 – Human rights lawyers file a class action lawsuit in a US federal court accusing the United Nations of gross negligenceand misconduct on behalf of victims of the cholera outbreak in Haiti in 2010.
January 9, 2015 – A US federal judge rules that the Haitian victims of the 2010 cholera outbreak cannot sue the United Nations, as the UN has legal immunity.
August 18, 2016 – For the first time, the United Nations acknowledges its own involvement in the cholera outbreak in Haiti in 2010.
May 15, 2017 – Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health and Population declares a state of emergency as cholera spreads throughout areas surrounding the capital district of Sanaa. According to the World Health Organization, as of July 2018, there have been 1,115,378 suspected cholera cases and 2310 associated deaths reported in Yemen since April 2017.
December 21, 2017 – The International Committee of the Red Cross announces that the cholera outbreak in Yemen has hit 1 million suspected cases, making it the world’s biggest cholera outbreak in recent history.
April 12, 2018 – A spokesman for the Health Ministry of Malawi tells CNN that at least 30 people have died and 893 are ill in a cholera outbreak that began in November 2017.
August 3, 2018 – The WHO, warning that Yemen may be on the brink of a third epidemic, reports that more than 1.1 million suspected cholera cases have been recorded April 17, 2017, to July 2018, with more than 2,300 associated deaths.
