Public Health:
The Cholera Crisis in Africa
S. Bhattacharya,1
R. Black,2
L. Bourgeois,3
J. Clemens,4
A. Cravioto,5
J. L. Deen,5,*
Gordon Dougan,6
R. Glass,7
R. F. Grais,8
M. Greco,9
I. Gust,10
J. Holmgren,11
S. Kariuki,12
P.-H. Lambert,13
M. A. Liu,14
I. Longini,15
G. B. Nair,16
R. Norrby,17
G. J. V. Nossal,10
P. Ogra,18
P. Sansonetti,19
L. von Seidlein,5
F. Songane,20
A.-M. Svennerholm,11
D. Steele,3
R. Walker3
In July 1994, 500,000 to 800,000 Rwandans crossed the border into the North Kivu region of Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC). During the first month after the influx, almost 50,000 refugees died; cholera was a major contributor (1).
1 Indian Council of Medical Research, Ansari Nagore, New Delhi, 110029, India.
2 Department of International Health, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
3 Enteric Vaccine Initiative, PATH, Seattle, WA 98107, USA.
4 International Vaccine Institute, Seoul, 151-600, Korea.
5 Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh.
6 The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1RQ, UK.
7 Fogarty Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
8 Epidemiology and Population Health, Epicentre, FR-75011 Paris, France.
9 FR-69110 Lyon, France.
10 The Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Department of Pathology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, 3010, Australia.
11 University of Gothenburg, SE-405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden.
12 Centre for Microbiology Research, Kenya Medical Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya.
13 University of Geneva, CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland.
14 Karolinska Institute, SE-171 77 Stockholm, Sweden.
15 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98109, USA.
16 National Institute of Cholera and Infectious Disease, Kolkata, 700010, India.
17 Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control, SE-171 82 Solna, Sweden.
18 University at Buffalo, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Buffalo, NY 14214, USA.
19 Unité de Pathogénie Microbienne Moléculaire, INSERM U786, Institut Pasteur, FR-75724 Paris Cedex 15, France.
20 Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland.
* Author for correspondence. E-mail: jdeen{at}ivi.int
