Latest Updates

  • Blog post June 20, 2018

    The StopCholera Toolkit is Now Available in Arabic

    Abdinasir Abubakar

    MD, MPH, Team Lead, Infectious Hazard Management (IHM) Unit | WHO Health Emergencies Department (WHE), World Health Organization, Regional Office for Eastern Mediterranean
    Screenshot Arabic Toolkit

    I am happy to inform you that most of the StopCholera Toolkit documents are now available in Arabic.

    The StopCholera Toolkit is a one-stop shop for cholera and oral cholera vaccine information. The Toolkit contains valuable information for cholera focal points and immunization program managers, Ministries of Health and health care workers who respond to cholera and/or administer the vaccine. The aim of the toolkit is to help decide if, when, where, and how to use oral cholera vaccine to reduce cholera mortality, prevent cases, and halt outbreaks.

  • Blog post June 3, 2018

    Stakeholder's Conference on Prevention, Control and Elimination of Cholera in Uganda

    David A. Sack, MD

    Professor | Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
    Uganda Stakeholders Meeting. Photo: (2018).

    Uganda Stakeholders Meeting. Photo: (2018).

    Cholera is a major public health problem in Uganda, leading to over 1,000 cases annually. In order to tackle the threat of cholera globally, the WHO released a global strategy, titled Ending Cholera: A Global Roadmap to 2030. Achieving the overall objective of the renewed strategy—reducing cholera mortality by 90% by 2030—relies on strong commitments from countries, partners, and donors to collectively engage in the fight against cholera. Therefore, in June 2017, the Uganda Ministry of Health (MOH) launched a National Integrated Comprehensive Cholera Prevention and Control Plan, which includes the strategic use of oral cholera vaccine (OCV) to prevent cholera among at-risk populations.

  • Cholera and OCV in the News

    February 2018: Prolonging herd immunity to cholera via vaccination: Accounting for human mobility and waning vaccine effects

    Oral cholera vaccines can be powerful tools for quickly protecting a population for a period of time that depends critically on vaccine coverage, vaccine efficacy over time, and the rate of population turnover through human mobility.

    See the research results (28-Feb-2018)

  • Blog post February 8, 2018

    How a Surging Stockpile of Vaccines Could Help Conquer Cholera

    As stocks of oral cholera vaccine rise, mass campaigns, like this one in South Sudan in 2014, become more feasible. Photo: AFP/STRINGER/GETTY IMAGES

    As stocks of oral cholera vaccine rise, mass campaigns, like this one in South Sudan in 2014, become more feasible. Photo: AFP/STRINGER/GETTY IMAGES

    This post, written by Kai Kupferschmidt, originally appeared in Science Magazine.

    Around the world, cholera is on the march. In Yemen, which is mired in a civil war, the devastating waterborne illness has sickened more than a million people since October 2016 and continues to spread. Outbreaks are ravaging Zambia, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and several other African countries. Haiti is still suffering from an epidemic that began in 2010. And last month, after torrential rains flooded parts of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), cases spiked there. "For reasons we do not understand, cholera seems to go through cycles of severe seasons," says David Sack, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.

  • Blog post December 12, 2017

    Stop the Guessing: Fighting Cholera through Better Formative Research

    Tom Davis, MPH

    Global Sector Lead for Sustainable Health, World Vision International
    Little girl practices safe hand washing
    Little girl practices safe hand washing

    In order to be successful in our efforts to stop cholera, we need to better understand why some people adopt behaviors that stop cholera, while others do not. Although we all have pet theories on why people decide to do things based on our own anecdotal experience, we can often be wrong. To decide if vaccines and antibiotics are effective, we don’t sit around a table and guess - we would consider this highly unethical and unscientific. Yet when it comes to promoting behaviors, that’s what many projects end up doing. We need to stop the guessing, and conduct better formative research on the behavioral determinants for WASH behaviors and cholera immunization.

  • Blog post December 12, 2017

    Stop Yelling: Using Neighbors to Mobilize Communities to Stop Cholera

    Tom Davis, MPH

    Global Sector Lead for Sustainable Health, World Vision International
    Man speaks into loudspeaker during vaccination campaign. Photo: WHO/C. Black
    Man speaks into loudspeaker during vaccination campaign. Photo: WHO/C. Black

    Achieving high levels of coverage of multiple-dose vaccines – such as the cholera vaccine – takes more than good logistics. Promoting turnout for immunization requires the use of evidence-based community mobilization methods. In 1983, I was involved with some of the early mass immunization efforts in Haiti while working for International Child Care, an organization that led the first mass immunization in Haiti years earlier.