Cholera Topics

• cholera bacterium
• oral rehydration therapy
• outbreak of cholera
• cholera cases
• sanitation practices
• stool specimens
• homemade solutions
• diarrheal illness
• baking soda
• transmission path
• causative agent
• reference laboratory
• health threat
• major health
• table salt
• several points
• o1
• electrolyte
• effluent
• person to person

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Cholera, Cholera

Oral rehydration therapy or ORT is highly effective, safe, and simple to administer. In situations where commercially produced ORT sachets are too expensive or difficult to obtain, alternative homemade solutions using various formulas of water, sugar, table salt, baking soda, and fruit offer less expensive methods of electrolyte repletion. In severe cholera cases with significant dehydration, the administration of intravenous rehydration solutions may be necessary.

In the first world, due to nearly universal advanced water treatment and sanitation practices, cholera is no longer a major health threat. The last major outbreak of cholera in the United States occurred in 1910-1911.

Effective sanitation practices, if instituted and adhered to in time, are usually sufficient to stop an epidemic. There are several points along the cholera transmission path at which its spread may be (and should be) halted: , showing typical cholera beds.

Cholera is transmitted from person to person through ingestion of water contaminated with the cholera bacterium, usually from faeces or other effluent. The source of the contamination is typically other cholera patients when their untreated diarrhea discharge is allowed to get into waterways or into groundwater or drinking water supplies. Any infected water and any foods washed in the water, as well as shellfish living in the affected waterway, can cause an infection. Cholera is rarely spread directly from person to person.

If an epidemic of cholera is suspected, the most common causative agent is Vibrio cholerae O1. If V. cholerae serogroup O1 is not isolated, the laboratory should test for V. cholerae O139. However, if neither of these organisms is isolated, it is necessary to send stool specimens to a reference laboratory.Infection with V. cholerae O139 should be reported and handled in the same manner as that caused by V. cholerae O1. The associated diarrheal illness should be referred to as cholera and must be reported as a case of cholera to the appropriate public health authorities.

The disease spread by trade routes (land and sea) to Russia, then to Western Europe, and from Europe to North America. Cholera is now no longer considered a pressing health threat in Europe and North America due to filtering and chlorination of water supplies, but still heavily affects populations in developing countries.

Cholera hit Ireland in 1849 and killed many of the Irish Famine survivors already weakened by starvation and fever.

The 1902-1904 cholera epidemic claimed 200,222 lives in the Philippines.

Dr John Snow The mode of communication of cholera. London 1855 His model was not immediately accepted but was seen to be the more plausible as medical microbiology developed over the next thirty years or so. Massive investment in clean water supply and well separated sewage treatment infractures was made between the mid-1850s and the 1900s which eliminated the threat of cholera epidemics from the major developed cities in the world. Robert Koch, 30 years later, identified V. cholerae with a microscope as the bacillus causing the disease in 1885.Cholera has been a laboratory for the study of evolution of virulence. The province of Bengal in British India was partitioned into West Bengal and East Pakistan in 1947. Prior to partition, both regions had cholera pathogens with similar characteristics. After 1947, India made more progress on public health than East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). As a consequence, the strains of the pathogen that succeeded in India had a greater incentive in the longevity of the host and are less virulent than the strains prevailing in Bangladesh, which uninhibitedly draw upon the resources of the host population, thus rapidly killing many victims.

However, because cholera was not present in the city, there were no cholera-related deaths, though the incident caused the city to become more serious about its sewage treatment.

Source: Wikipedia > Cholera