Cholera Coming Soon?

Could cholera be lurking in your local stream?

I’ve been reading the fascinating account of the Cholera Outbreak in London in 1854, The Ghost Map. Back then they believed that disease was caused by ‘Miasma’ (a highly unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapor). And considering what a stinky place London was in that time, it’s not surprising. What with open sewers and uncovered graves in paupers’ cemeteries, the place must have reeked. This book is about how two men worked out that Cholera was transmitted through contaminated water, not from the smell in the air.

Cholera is a water-borne aused by consuming contaminated water. In the case of the terrible outbreak in Haiti in 2010 after the earthquake, the UN peacekeepers brought it with them. Poor sanitation sent sewage from the Peacekeepers’ camp into the local waterways. In the early days of that outbreak, there was around an 8% death rate of those who were hit with it. Some people aren’t affected at all, and others get mildly ill, while others die from the lack of fluids in a matter of hours.

The water can be treated with chlorine or by boiling, but there is a possibility that there are some strands that are chlorine-resistant. That is a scary thought.

Climate-change researchers say that it is possible that cholera will increase as sea levels and water temperatures rise. The conditions that give way to cholera are hot weather and above-average rainfall, when there is poor infrastructure and crowding. If we had our drinking water compromised (by flood or other issues with infrastructure) and we had an outbreak, I wonder how long it would take until we realised what it was. First, you would think it was a stomach bug, or maybe food poisoning. You might just brave it out at home, drinking water and sitting on the toilet.

In Milwakee in 1993, there was a stomach illness outbreak caused by a chlorine-resistant parasite Cryptosporidium parvum, and it took the health board 60 hours to realize the water was compromised. They tracked the illnesses, the tested for different reasons, and they tested the water. And finally they found the solution. This bug wasn’t as lethal as Cholera can be, but still 69 people died. If it had been cholera, it made me think a lot of people can die from Cholera in 60 hours.