If you’ve played the Oregon Trail then you know cholera is a harrowing illness that killed
many a’pioneer.
But what exactly IS cholera and why are people still getting it?
Hey there bankers from Boston and Carpenters from Ohio, Trace here for DNews.
While many of us only know it from the game Oregon Trail, cholera is a real infection
with real consequences.
In 2010, Haiti was hit with a massive earthquake.
UN workers arrived to help but possibly also brought cholera along with them.
Haiti had not had a cholera outbreak in more that 50 years.
But the 2010 outbreak left about 790,000 people sick and over 9,000 dead... we wanted to know
what exactly is this disease, and what does it do?
Cholera is a bacterial infection caused by Vibrio cholerae.
Only about 1 in 10 people infected develop symptoms, but those that do must get treatment
quickly and may experience excessive watery diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal cramping.
Cholera can kill a healthy individual within hours if they are not treated properly.
According to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the incubation period for
the disease is about 12 hours to 4-and-a-half days.
Cholera affects the digestive tract by releasing choleragen, or cholera toxin, a protein that
attacks the gut, causing that watery diarrhea.
Because those afflicted are losing so much fluid, it leave them severely dehydrated!
This can cause hypovolemic shock -- or an extreme loss of the body’s fluid.
This loss of fluid literally makes the blood thicken which causes problems with circulation
and keeps it from reaching organs.
This also happens during regular old dehydration, and can lead to death if a patient isn’t
hydrated immediately!
Because the loss of fluid is the major symptom, the primary treatment is fast and plentiful
rehydration.
In areas of the world where cholera outbreaks are common, doctors keep rehydration packets,
IV fluids, and salts on hand.
I know you're probably thinking salt makes you thirsty, but it's also an important part
of life, without salt our body can't move fluids around easily -- so these packets contain
sodium for water movement, and glucose which was discovered to accelerate fluid movement
by research published in the Lancet in 1978 -- they called it the "most important medical
advance of the century."
There are also antibiotics for cholera; however rapid rehydration is the most important step
in saving lives.
Today we know that cholera is often transmitted through faecally contaminated water and food,
but back in the early 19th century, physicians thought it was caused by bad odors, or miasmas,
rising up from the sewers and open graves.
Then in the early 1850s, a British physician by the name of John Snow (no, not THAT John
Snow, this guy actually knows something…) Snow theorized that something else was responsible,
because the main symptoms were in the digestive tract, not in the lungs.
Instead of breathing in the source of cholera, Snow believed patients ingested it.
During an outbreak in Soho London in 1854, Snow mapped the cases of cholera and found
that there was an epicenter to the outbreak.
The Broad Street water pump was surrounded by the highest incidences of the disease,
which led Snow to believe it was contaminated water that was the culprit..
He published his findings in a book in 1855!
They're a fascinating read.
Also in 1854, in Florence, Italy, Filippo Pacini published a paper describing the microorganism
that caused the disease.
And in 1884, Robert Koch isolated the bacteria and described how the cholera was spread.
Since then, the disease has been mostly eradicated in developed countries with proper sanitation.
Each year cholera affects 1.3 to 4 million people and causes 21,000 to 143,000 deaths
worldwide.
There are several regions still affected, including India, much of Africa, and most
recently, Haiti.
After much investigation, into the 2010 Haitian earthquake response, it is thought that some
Nepalese UN workers may have had cholera in their systems, since Nepal was dealing with
an outbreak of their own.
Because the septic tanks the UN workers used emptied into a landfill that was close to
a river which was used for drinking and bathing -- they spread that cholera to the local population.
In August 2016, the UN admitted they played a part in the outbreak and they are planning
to help with financial support.
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Are you interested in other diseases...like leprosy?
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Have you been to a nation stricken with cholera?
What precautions did you take?
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