The World Health Organization (WHO) warned Monday that the world will have a shortage of cholera vaccines by 2025 and that one billion people in 43 countries could be infected with the disease.
On alert for the increase in cholera cases worldwide, the agency of the United Nations Organization (UN) stresses that this “is an emergency”, arguing that it is necessary to “intensify immunization to contain” this scenario.
However, the biggest problem is access to the vaccine and a WHO partner in this area, the Gavi Global Vaccination Alliance, has already warned that the lack of doses must persist until 2025, the UN News portal reported.
According to Gavi, it is possible to guarantee a large-scale delivery of doses for preventive vaccination by 2026, but for that, countries must act urgently.
Currently, 24 countries have cases of cholera and, according to the WHO, the disease could spread to 43 nations, putting a billion people at risk.
Factors for people to become infected include poverty, conflict, climate change and displacement.
“The movements move people away from safer sources of food, water and medical care,” warns the WHO.
Cholera cases and deaths increased last year, expanding to nine new regions, particularly those in conflict and with high levels of poverty.
The situation prompted the WHO and its partners to temporarily change the regimen of doses administered for prevention from two to one.
However, the reserves were exhausted in December, adds the portal.
By the end of 2022, a total of 15 countries had reported cases, a number that by May reached 24 nations.
Mozambique is one of the countries with an increase in patients in the decade of seasonal change in cholera cases.
The risk is that there will be setbacks, after the advances in the control of the disease in previous decades.
The WHO estimates that an additional 10 million units of vaccines were used to respond to outbreaks between 2021 and 2022.
Demand was higher than the previous decade combined, he added.
For Gavi’s managing director of Vaccine Markets and Health Security, Derrick Sim, “the good news is that there are doses to continue covering all emergency demand, despite the increase in outbreaks.”
For Derrick Sim, it is the obligation of the authorities to “prevent outbreaks”, in addition to making collective efforts to revitalize prevention programs.
The WHO had already warned of a bleak outlook regarding the prospects for controlling the disease in the short term.
Source: TSF
