The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a new strategy to reduce 90% global deaths due to Cholera by 2030: ‘Ending Cholera- A Global Roadmap to 2030’.

Key Messages:

In 2017, cholera continues to hit communities already made vulnerable by tragedies such as conflicts and famines.

• Yemen currently faces the world’s largest cholera outbreak, with over 700,000 suspected cases and more than 2,000 deaths reported since April.
• Over 800 people have died of cholera in Somalia since the beginning of the year, and over 500 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
• Haiti has now reported nearly 1 million cases and 10,000 deaths since the beginning of the 2010 outbreak.

Every death from cholera is preventable with the tools we have today, putting the goal of ending its public health impact within our reach.

Cholera can be controlled with a multi-sector approach—including basic water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services, and oral cholera vaccines (OCV).

The Global Roadmap focuses on three strategic axes:

1. Early detection and quick response to contain outbreaks Through interventions like robust community engagement, strengthening early warning surveillance and laboratory capacities, health systems and supply readiness, and establishing rapid response teams, we can drastically reduce the number of deaths from cholera even in fragile settings.
2. A targeted multi-sectoral approach to prevent cholera recurrence:  The strategy calls on countries and partners to focus on cholera “hotspots”, the relatively small areas most heavily affected by cholera, which experience cases on an ongoing or seasonal basis and play an important role in the spread of cholera to other regions and areas. Cholera transmission can be stopped in these areas through measures including improved water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and through use of oral cholera vaccines (OCV). In Africa alone, 40 to 80 million people live in cholera hotspots.
3. An effective mechanism of coordination for technical support, advocacy, resource mobilisation, and partnership, at local and global levels  As a global network of organisations, the GTFCC is positioned to bring together partners from across all sectors, and offers an effective country-driven platform to support advocacy and communications, fundraising, inter-sectoral coordination, and technical assistance.

By implementing the strategy between now and 2030, the Global Task Force on Cholera Control (GTFCC) partners will support countries to reduce cholera deaths by 90 percent.

With the commitment of cholera-affected countries, technical partners, and donors, as many as 20 countries could eliminate disease transmission by 2030.

Successful implementation of the Global Roadmap may allow up to 50 percent cost savings compared with the ongoing average yearly cost of continuously responding to emerging cholera outbreaks.

Most importantly, the proposed long-term cholera control investments will also significantly reduce the impact of all water-related diseases, while contributing to improvements in

• poverty,
• malnutrition, and
• education,

thereby representing a significant step toward the achievement of the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) for the world’s poorest people and toward a world free from the threat of cholera.

Useful Links:

Link to the WHO news release:

http://who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/partners-reduce-cholera/en/

Link to the Executive Summary of the Global Roadmap (English) [PDF]:

http://who.int/cholera/publications/global-roadmap-summary.pdf?ua=1

Link to the full Global Roadmap document (English) [PDF]:

http://who.int/cholera/publications/global-roadmap.pdf?ua=1