Why is cholera such an emergency? Wasn Haiti already plagued with disease?
Yes, but not cholera. The seventh pandemic of cholera, currently ongoing, started in south Asia in 1961 and hit Peru in 1991. It hadn’t reached the Caribbean before, so Haitians have had little experience with managing cholera, and no immunity. This strain also carries a virulent toxin found in earlier pandemics. Isn’t there a vaccine? There are three vaccines, all oral and made of dead cholera bacteria. One has been used successfully in emergencies among refugees in Asia and Africa. Another appears to work in one dose, rather than the usual two, so could protect people fast enough to slow a cholera epidemic in mid-outbreak, says John Clemens of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea. Yet the Haitian government’s strategy for fighting this outbreak does not mention vaccines. The problem, says Peter Hotez of George Washington University in Washington DC, is there are “too few doses on hand”. People in regions in which cholera is prevalent, such as Africa, do not use m
