Climate change impacts reportedly making cholera outbreaks worse

The World Health Organisation says that while poverty and conflict remain enduring drivers of the spread, climate change and worsening flash floods are surely ‘risk multipliers.’

‘Malawi’s water-sanitation indicators were already extremely bad,’ says UNICEF health emergency specialist Raoul Kamadje, ‘but the storms made a bad situation worse.’

There is little credence to the theory that warming temperatures turbocharge the outbreak of cholera directly, but ‘one of the big mechanisms by which extreme events will impact cholera risk is the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure,’ explains Kamadje.

On that front, the World Bank estimated in 2022 that cyclone Ana collapsed 340 boreholes and destroyed 54,000 latrines, meaning those displaced will have utilised whatever water sources were available to them, including those contaminated with cholera. Crops inevitably also came into contact with the disease in sodden farmlands across the south.

Droughts as a result of extreme heat in places like Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia have all seen cholera proliferate over the past year too, as larger populations are forced to make use of the same water sources. Malnourishment in poverty stricken areas, meanwhile, further weakens the immunity of locals.

Not in anyway discrediting other factors, such as vaccine rates, access to aid, and the formation of landslides through deforestation, but myriad signs point to climate change and its secondary impacts as being significant in the growing number of cholera cases year-on-year.

Regardless of differing opinions on the matter, though, the worrying thing is that there will be plenty more opportunities to measure the correlation between extreme weather and the spread of disease in the near future… and therein lies the bigger problem.