The World Health Organization is sending 900,000 doses of cholera vaccine to Bangladesh to help prevent a major outbreak of cholera in the crowded Rohingya refugee camp that sits on the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar. At least a half-million Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, have crossed the border to escape a military crackdown in their villages. In Yemen, a massive and deadly cholera epidemic has affected a half-million people, and the World Health Organization expects that number to climb to 1 million by year\u2019s end. Worldwide, about 100,000 people die from cholera each year. WATCH: WHO, Others Pledge to End Cholera End cholera by 2030 On Tuesday, the WHO, along with governments, aid agencies and donors announced a roadmap to end cholera by 2030. It\u2019s the first global pledge to end this disease. Dr. Amesh Adalja said it\u2019s not possible to eliminate cholera because cholera is a bacteria that exists naturally. Adalja is an infectious disease expert at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. He is also a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Adalja told VOA it is possible to make cholera as rare in Bangladesh and in Yemen as it is in the United States and the rest of North America. He said sanitation is the key to eliminating cholera. The disease is \u201cnot something that should happen in 2017,\u201d Adalja said. \u201cThis is something that can be fixed by development and the civilizing effect of sanitation.\u201d Cholera is a diarrheal disease. The bacteria that causes cholera lives in coastal waters and in brackish rivers. It thrives where there is poor water treatment, poor toilet sanitation and poor hygiene. It\u2019s caused by eating or drinking contaminated food and water. Malnutrition plays a role Malnutrition is also a factor. Jesse Hartness is the senior director of emergency health and nutrition at Save the Children, an agency that has been working to control the cholera outbreak in Yemen. \u201cThere\u2019s a cycle of illness and malnutrition where you have a child who is sick, and they lose their appetite,\u201d Hartness said. \u201cThey are dehydrated from having diarrhea, they lose weight, and, once they are malnourished, that also drives their vulnerability to additional illness.\u201d Anyone can get cholera, but children, pregnant women and the elderly are most at risk. Yet, cholera is not difficult or expensive to treat. Hartness said it is simple if the disease is caught early and if you can provide hydration to the less severe patients so they don\u2019t become severe patients who require more intensive treatment. But in places ravaged by flooding and other natural disasters, or by manmade disasters like war, or in crowded refugee camps, sanitation is hard to maintain. Water can\u2019t be treated properly. Human waste can\u2019t easily be disposed of hygienically, so in addition to providing aid, organizations like Save the Children find themselves trying to rebuild sanitation systems. The WHO says about 2 billion people globally lack access to clean water. Vaccine available Vaccines can help. Adalja said the oral vaccines the WHO uses to manage cholera outbreaks have about a 65 percent effectiveness rate over five years. He adds that \u201c65 percent isn\u2019t 100 percent, but it is very good.\u201d Hartness said in order to end cholera in Yemen, the war that Yemen has been mired in for three years has to end. \u201cIn order to really look at ending this outbreak, we have to look at ending the war,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd if that can\u2019t happen immediately, we have to look at negotiating access to these communities … that are the hardest to reach.\u201d Adalja added, \u201cIt\u2019s basically a poverty trap for some of those countries which they can never get out of. … This is something that can be fixed by development and the civilizing effect of sanitation.\u201d Forty-seven countries are affected by cholera, and the WHO expects the global cholera situation to get worse, which is behind its urgency to end the disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The World Health Organization is sending 900,000 doses of cholera vaccine to Bangladesh to help prevent a major outbreak of cholera in the crowded Rohingya refugee camp that sits on the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar. At least a half-million Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, have crossed the border to escape a military crackdown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51357,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51356"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}