Recent news on cholera outbreaks.
May 9 – Yemen war: Surge in cholera outbreak kills 34 – WHO – The World Health Organisation says 2,022 suspected cases of cholera and acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) were reported between 27 April and 7 May.
May 9 – IOM Responds as Cholera Outbreak Spreads in South Sudan – Relief agencies are responding to cholera outbreaks across the country, with nine counties currently reporting active transmission, including three in Jonglei alone.
May 9 – Haiti sees decrease in suspected cholera cases – (PAHO) says the number of suspected cholera cases reported in this French-speaking Caribbean country, up to April 8, 2017, has decreased when compared to the same periods in 2015 and 2016.In its latest report, PAHO says to date 4,871 suspected cholera cases have been reported in Haiti, including 69 deaths.
This represents a 60 and 61 per cent decrease compared to the 12,373 and 12,226 suspected cholera cases reported during the same period in 2015 and 2016, respectively.
May 5 – As rainy season starts, UN health agency warns of cholera outbreak in drought-hit Somalia – Somalia is suffering from the largest cholera outbreak in the past five years and the number of people killed is expected to double by the end of June, the United Nations health agency.
The UN World Health Organization (WHO) reported close to 32,000 cases of cholera, including 618 deaths, since the beginning of the year.
May 6 – Nagpur – After 4 years, cholera makes a comeback – After a lull of four years, cholera, the deadliest of all water borne diseases has raised its ugly head again.
About 31 positive cases of cholera have been recorded between April 1, 2016 and March 31, 2017.
May 1 – Ghana – Health Service reminds regional directors to be alert for cholera outbreak – The Ghana Health Service has reminded of its cholera alert to all regional health directors and warned of the risk of an outbreak in 2017, has increased by the onset of the rains and potential flooding in some communities.

Contaminated water supply puts Shopian on brink of disease outbreak.
“We have been provided 24-hour water supply but the water is dirty, mixed with sand and mud.
This water is not fit for drinking,” Muhammad Amin Wagay from Pinjora said.
Tariq Ahmed Pir, a resident of Alyalpora said that the supplied water is so dirty that on occasions, domestic animals also refuse to drink it.
The authorities are not taking the issues seriously.
The drinking water supply feeder near Killora village for 36 villages of Rampathri area is filled with sand and mud up to 11.5 feet.
Authorities say due to the huge mixture of sand and mud with water these filters gets filled with sand and mud within three days and the department has no effective mechanism to clean them regularly.
“The contractors of Mughal Road put all the soil, sand and other material on the banks of rivulet, when snow starts melting and due to heavy rain all the mud flows into the river and contaminates the water,” a group of PHE employees said.
Beig said the issue of contaminated water supply is known to the chief minister.
About 25 water supply schemes get water from Rambiara Rivulet, our filtration plants only have capacity to filter the large dirty particles, he said.

A study led by UC Santa Cruz researchers has found that drought dramatically increases the severity of West Nile virus epidemics in the United States, although populations affected by large outbreaks acquire immunity that limits the size of subsequent epidemics.
The study, published February 8 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, involved researchers from UC Santa Cruz, Stanford University, and the New York State Department of Health.
They analyzed 15 years of data on human West Nile virus infections from across the United States and found that epidemics were much larger in drought years and in regions that had not suffered large epidemics in the past.
"We found that drought was the dominant weather variable correlated with the size of West Nile virus epidemics," said first author Sara Paull, who led the study as a post-doctoral researcher at UC Santa Cruz and is now at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
In the new study, Paull and Marm Kilpatrick, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, analyzed patterns in the number of severe West Nile virus infections each year in each state and nationally.
Model projections indicated that increased drought could double the size of future West Nile virus epidemics, but that outbreaks would be limited to regions that have yet to sustain large numbers of cases.
"Drought identified as key to severity of West Nile virus epidemics: Study finds transmission of West Nile virus is higher in drought years, but after large outbreaks acquired immunity limits the size of subsequent epidemics."
ScienceDaily, 7 February 2017.
Drought identified as key to severity of West Nile virus epidemics: Study finds transmission of West Nile virus is higher in drought years, but after large outbreaks acquired immunity limits the size of subsequent epidemics.
"Drought identified as key to severity of West Nile virus epidemics: Study finds transmission of West Nile virus is higher in drought years, but after large outbreaks acquired immunity limits the size of subsequent epidemics."

Cameroon’s cholera outbreaks vary by climate region.
Cholera follows different, distinct outbreak patterns in different climate subzones of the large country, the researchers reported in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.
"The study highlights the complexity of cholera transmission, and its close link with environmental and climatic factors," said J. Glenn Morris, M.D., a professor in the College of Medicine and the director of the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogen Institute.
Cholera is a severe diarrheal disease caused by certain strains of the bacteria Vibrio cholera, which can be found free-living in the environment, often in bodies of water, or can be transmitted between people.
The data, collected between 2000 and 2012 by the Ministry of Public Health of Cameroon and the World Health Organization country office, include details on the more than 43,000 cases of cholera that occurred in Cameroon during the 13-year period.
"Cholera displays different epidemiological patterns by climate subzone," Ngwa said.
"As such, a singleintervention strategy for controlling cholera within Cameroon does not appear to be feasible.
During the 13-year span, on average, 7.9 percent of the cholera cases in Cameroon were fatal annually, and with an attack rate of 17.9 cases per 100,000 Cameroon inhabitants per year.
Moreover, each region had distinct relationships between rainfall, temperature, and cholera cases — in the Sudano-Sahalian and Guinea Equitorial subzones, increasing temperature and rainfall was found to be associated with higher rates of cholera transmission, whereas the opposite association was seen in the Tropical Humid and Equatorial Monsoon subzones.
"Government officials should enable enhanced public health surveillance and rapid response to cholera outbreaks at the health district level in order to encourage a reduction in transmission," Ngwa said.

Dramatic cholera outbreaks in East Africa linked to extreme El Niño event.
Scientists have established a link between El Niño and cholera epidemics in Africa.
A study conducted in Bangladesh revealed an association between the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle and cholera.
El Niño is a climate cycle which has a global impact on weather patterns including tropical storms and drought.
The new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science is the first to tackle this issue.
They created high-resolution maps of cholera incidence and discussed the factors that could explain the outbreaks – whether population density, access to drinking water, access to sanitation, and distance to nearest major water body.
The scientists found that while the total number of cholera cases did not vary between El Niño years and non-El Niño years, the geographic distribution of cases did.
There were approximately 50,000 additional cases in East Africa during and following El Niño years and 30,000 fewer cases in southern Africa.
Thus, increased rainfall in East Africa partly explained why the number of cases exploded during El Niño.
We saw an association between rainfall and disease, at least in the few regions of East Africa where we know that rainfall tends to be higher during El Niño years", Moore pointed out.