CHOLERA

Vibrio cholerae is back. WHO data released last week said 775 people had died of cholera and 16,141 had taken ill in Zimbabwe. For a country where a loaf of bread costs 10 million Zimbabwe dollars, the country’s foreign minister’s statement—that the country had enough “foreign currency to buy pipes” to mend the leaky sewage system—seemed a rather cruel joke. South African officials have declared part of their border with Zimbabwe a disaster area as hundreds of Zimbabweans have sought treatment in their neighbouring country. The disease has spread to Mozambique and Botswana too.

There have been earlier outbreaks of cholera—one in southern India and Sri Lanka following the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, hundreds died of cholera in Basra when the city’s sewage system was destroyed. One of the worst recent outbreaks was in 1994 when thousands of Rwandan refugees fleeing the genocide succumbed to cholera.

Cholera and a hand pump

In September 1854, cholera broke out in Soho, London, killing over 700 people in a matter of weeks. A doctor, John Snow, plotted and mapped the spread of the disease. He found out that brewery workers in Soho were left untouched. That, he figured out, was possibly because they drank ale and had their own water source. That’s how he narrowed in on a water pump on Broad Street, where the water had been contaminated by an infected baby’s nappy. The nappy had been washed in a bucket and the dirty water had found its way into the sewage system and then into the water supply. Though the residents of Soho refused to believe they were getting cholera from the water they drank, Snow removed the handle from the pump. The epidemic ceased.

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