pandemic tracking contagions from cholera to ebola and beyond

Sadly, “Pandemic” has no clear focus, and it is not the much-needed definitive analysis of cholera I hoped it would be. Barry’s spectacular “The Great Influenza,” Shah’s previous book took readers on a long, research-rich journey through the historic struggles between mankind and one of its great scourges. Given these developments, I eagerly anticipated Sonia Shah’s “Pandemic.” Cholera is the spine that runs through her tour of global contagions, and I hoped Shah would deliver the historical, biological, political and social perspectives on the disease that she brilliantly exhibited in her book on malaria, “The Fever.” Like John M. The outbreak that threatens millions of refugees and people living in disputed territories in Syria and Iraq and in neighboring nations is fueled by man-made disasters like war coupled with El Niño ocean-warming events, which may spread the bacteria and be especially intense in 2016 thanks to climate change. From the moment cholera appeared in Haiti in 2010, its control became fodder for intractable public health disputes, allowing the microbe to spread unchecked. Though the cause of cholera is known and its treatment is well understood and inexpensive, efforts to contain it are often stymied by politics, poor planning or poor infrastructure. Water systems across the nation were soon contaminated with the bacteria passed in human waste, leading to a breathtaking cumulative 745,558 diagnosed cases of the disease by July 2015, causing 8,972 deaths. The microbe’s most horrible 21st-century toll continues to unfold today in Haiti, where Vibrio cholera was unwittingly introduced by Nepali United Nations peacekeepers bivouacked alongside a river tributary after the 2010 earthquake. Two centuries later, it is in its seventh pandemic.

Having appeared only in Bengal, cholera made its first pandemic leap in 1817, during British rule in India. And the disease happens to be making its mark all over the world today, from ISIS-controlled territories in Syria and Iraq to Cuban prisons. The 300 percent jump in cholera cases is especially troubling - that deadly microbe devastated England nearly as much as the plague, claiming thousands of lives, especially in London. The past five years had apparently witnessed a 136 percent increase in scarlet fever cases, a remarkable 300 percent rise in the confirmed cases of cholera along with reported occurrences of other once-vanquished diseases like tuberculosis, measles and whooping cough.

Over Christmas, headlines across Britain screamed that Victorian-era diseases had returned.

Pandemic tracking contagions from cholera to ebola and beyond