Apply the master plan for covid-19 to cholera

Since covid-19 engulfed the world two years ago, the expression “unprecedented” has become something of a catchphrase.

But while the coronavirus has posed unique challenges in times of deep global interconnectedness, pandemics are nothing new.

Not even covid is the only one we are suffering today.

Cholera outbreaks are rampant in much of the developing world.

While the SARS-CoV-2 virus is new, cholera – a waterborne diarrheal disease caused by the bacterium

–

it is ancient, as is its history of widespread devastation.

The current pandemic of this disease is the seventh that the planet has suffered since the beginning of the 19th century.

Despite their apparent differences, COVID-19 and cholera have much in common.

Both are at least partially vaccine-controllable, and both spread easily in crowded and unhygienic environments.

Consequently, ensuring shelter and strengthening water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure and practices are crucial to limiting its transmission.

These common aspects explain why measures to limit covid-19, such as reducing travel and increasing vigilance over personal hygiene, also produced a drop in cholera cases.

But, as governments loosen restrictions due to the pandemic, this disease is making a comeback with renewed vigor.

At the end of 2021, there were 16 active outbreaks on the planet.

However, the response to the covid-19 pandemic can still teach us valuable lessons to strengthen the fight against cholera, starting with the importance of research

to combat disease outbreaks.

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 generated a massive and largely coordinated push, making evidence-based decision-making possible at all levels of prevention and control.

Initiatives such as the Global Research Plan for COVID-19 helped guide this effort, ensuring that resources were channeled to the areas where knowledge and innovation were most needed.

Research is no less important in the fight against cholera.

That is why, last year, the Global Cholera Task Force (GTTCC) launched a research agenda that brings together the collective vision of 177 world experts and other actors on the disease, and identifies the questions to solve more urgent.

The responses will be crucial to achieving the goals set by the GTTCC in the global plan to End Cholera by 2030.

Many of the questions could also be found on the covid-19 research agenda.

For example, what is the fastest and most cost-effective way to use limited supplies of vaccine?

How can we improve the adoption and sustainability of response measures to prevent the disease from reaching epidemic or pandemic proportions?

How can we involve communities at risk in the design and implementation of interventions?

Which disease surveillance systems are the most effective, and when and where should they be deployed?

It is much harder to mobilize resources to tackle a disease that affects the world's poorest and most marginalized people

The questions may be the same, but the effort to answer them has been very different.

With the coronavirus pandemic, strong political will and massive investment created the conditions for researchers to produce answers quickly.

Although cholera has been around for much longer, solutions are still elusive.

One key reason is that, while covid-19 ravaged both developed and developing countries, cholera was eradicated from the global north more than 150 years ago.

It is much more difficult to mobilize resources to tackle a disease that affects the world's poorest and most marginalized people.

With just a fraction of the underlying commitment to the fight against covid-19, huge advances in cholera research could be achieved.

Epidemiological surveillance would allow the mapping of transmission patterns.

New and innovative diagnostic tests could increase the speed, efficiency, and quality of case detection and confirmation.

And new or better vaccines would strengthen the link between emergency responses and long-term control and prevention.

Optimizing the frequency and doses of vaccines is essential, as is learning how to engage communities to ensure responses to the needs of marginalized communities.

To transform the treatment of the vulnerable, it is necessary to study the impact of antibiotics on the transmission of the bacteria and to understand what factors enable (and block) therapeutic integration into case management by health workers.

Armed with this knowledge, countries and their health partners would be in a better position to choose the most effective tools and approaches as they move forward with their National Plans against this disease.

This, in turn, would make it easier to attract additional funding, further boosting such progress.

We have learned a lot during the covid-19 pandemic.

We have listened to our public health authorities and taken steps to limit the spread of the virus: wearing masks, practicing social distancing, quarantining, getting vaccinated and washing our hands more regularly.

We must harness this increased awareness and momentum to achieve more in public health – not just in our own communities, but across the globe.

That means targeting other much older scourges.

We have the tools to defeat cholera, but we still need research to identify how, when and where to use them.

Only then can we protect the world from this far too unprecedented disease.

Firdausi Qadri

is head of the Mucosal Immunology and Vaccinology Unit at the International Center for the Study of Diarrheal Diseases in Dhaka.

is Deputy Project Coordinator in the same department.

Translated from the English by David Meléndez Tormen.

You can follow PLANETA FUTURO on

to our 'newsletter'

.