Refugees are often at risk K M Asad/LightRocket via Getty

The World Health Organization and 50 other agencies working on health and international development have declared war on cholera. A road map will be launched today that describes how the partners plan to cut deaths from the water-borne bacteria – now running at 95,000 a year – by 90 per cent by 2030.

That will mean eliminating cholera from 20 of the 47 countries that have it, and enabling the rest to detect and stop outbreaks before they get out of control, according to this Global Task Force on Cholera Control.

The challenge is daunting. Three million people get cholera every year, in Asia, Africa and Haiti, and increasing urbanisation and temperatures will put more people at risk. In Yemen, the biggest epidemic in modern times is now approaching 800,000 cases, and is growing. Emergency experts say a “catastrophic” outbreak looms in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.


We already have the tools to stop this, says Peter Salama, head of emergency operations at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland. Cholera spreads in water containing infected faeces. Rich countries banished it a century ago, not with vaccines, but with toilets and hygiene.

Falling funding

In poor countries, 2 billion people drink from water sources contaminated with faeces and 2.4 billion have no toilets, according to the WHO. Yet aid from rich countries to build sewage systems has fallen.

The WHO says spending on sanitation must prioritise “hotspots” where cholera lurks all the time. Spending on cholera goes mostly to contain outbreaks in new places, leaving hotspots as continued sources of disease.

The task force’s road map calls for coordinated investments – and for deployment of the real game changer, an oral cholera vaccine that has proved over the past few years that it can quickly contain outbreaks. Nearly a million doses are already en route for Bangladesh.

“This disease doesn’t deserve to be in this century,” says Seth Berkley, head of the vaccine agency Gavi in Geneva. “We can make this a reality.”