But globally there is a shortage of vaccines available, so vaccination can't be used nearly as widely as it should be. A big advantage of the cholera vaccine is that it is oral, so it’s very simple to administer-people simply drink it.

MSF is increasingly using vaccination to help curb cholera outbreaks that are predicted to start soon or have just begun. For example, in 2016 during the cholera outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo, health promoters visted villages to encourage people to wash their hands, to safely dispose of waste, and to get help as soon as symptoms of cholera begin.

Community health promotionĭuring outbreaks, health promoters visit schools, churches, markets, and homes to help people implement measures to protect themselves against cholera and know what to do if they develop diarrhea. In response to the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh, MSF set up water distribution systems in Cox's Bazar, drilled boreholes and tube wells, rehabilitated and constructed latrines, and distributed domestic water filters.

This typically involves activities ranging from distributing soap, clean buckets and water disinfection tablets for home use, to providing bucket chlorination at water sources before water is carried home. MSF water and sanitation staff work to ensure availability of sufficient latrines and adequate supplies of clean water from safe sources, at both the home and communal levels. Since an effective oral vaccine became available within the past decade, we have also incorporated large-scale vaccination campaigns into our response. If patients receive the care they need, deaths can be reduced from as high as 50% to below 2%. The key pillars of this strategy rely on MSF's medical staff working alongside epidemiologists, water and sanitation experts, logistics managers and community health promoters. Amid ongoing full-scale war that caused the country's infrastructure and health care system to collapse, over 2 million people in Yemen have suffered from cholera since the outbreak's start in 2016.Īn effective response to cholera involves engaging on several different fronts at the same time-and as fast as possible-to treat sick patients and to stop transmission within communities. Among our current projects, we are active in Yemen, which continues to face the world's largest cholera epidemic since modern record-keeping began in 1949. Thankfully there have been no new cases since February 2019, thanks to years of intensive efforts by Haitian health authorities and international organizations.

More recently one of our larger responses was in Haiti, where a cholera epidemic that began shortly after the devastating 2010 earthquake has so far caused over 800,000 cases and nearly 10,000 deaths. At MSF we started responding to cholera epidemics in the 1980s, and are gradually working to improve the effectiveness of our response.

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