What is cholera?
Cholera is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main feature of the disease is severe diarrhea and dehydration. The incubation time of the bacteria can vary from six hours to two days.
Contamination
The disease is transmitted through contaminated water, which can by drinking contaminated water, but also by eating raw fish that swim in contaminated water or by eating fruit that has been washed in contaminated water. Also by contact with feces or vomit from a patient can be infected. To prevent the disease must be hygienically to work, be careful with raw food, impure water and ice. Within thirty minutes, the bacterium divides into the human body. This makes the human immune system is confused, so it can not make any intruders harmless. The incubation period of the bacteria varies from six hours to two days.
Development
In 85 percent of cases, the disease without symptoms. But if symptoms do occur, the disease may have serious consequences. The first symptoms that occur after infection are nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and sudden watery diarrhea. Because there is a lot of moisture is lost through these symptoms is death by dehydration common. After 24 hours, a cholera patient may already be dehydrated. Most (fatal) casualties among infants and the elderly. These two groups are the most vulnerable because their immune system is not yet sufficiently developed or is functioning, to a lesser extent.
That the stage of dehydration has begun, include see a dry mouth, fewer tears, sunken eyes, extreme fatigue and a fishy odor of feces. If cholera in this phase is not adequately treated or not, life-threatening complications can occur. The dehydration can cause shock, a shock when the blood pressure drops rapidly and severely, thereby vital organs do not get enough blood and can no longer work properly.
Cholera treatment
With a quick and proper treatment is the probability of death low, around 1%. The treatment consists in the first stage from the administration of fluids so as to prevent dehydration. In addition to the administration of fluid solutions or ORS, via the mouth or via an infusion if the patient is unable to drink the solution, antibiotics can be administered.
19th-century spread of cholera
Cholera was already known before the 19th century in India, especially in Bengal. In 1817 the disease spread outside the latter area. Around 1830 the disease reached Europe via Russia. In the Netherlands was established in Scheveningen cholera in 1832 and a year later deceased in the Netherlands, nearly 5,000 people from this disease. Although it was laid in 1844 in a novel already link between cholera and contaminated drinking water, this association was only in 1849 recognized for the first time in the medical world by British physician-scientist John Snow (essay on the Mode of Communication of Cholera). In 1855, the second version was issued. It contains a detailed study of the effects of contaminated water from a water pump on Broad Street to the epidemic that took place in London in 1854. People living near the water pump (and thus fetched their water there) were more frequently infected than elsewhere.
During the Industrial Revolution in England, there were many infections of cholera. This had to do with people living under very poor conditions, there were no water pipes or sewers and the feces of humans and animals landed directly into cesspools. If someone in the family got cholera diarrhea was caused by the diarrhea, dehydration came forth. If someone then drink from the dirty barrels or like they were sicker. Only at the end of industrialization did build the British government water and sewage.
Epidemics
- In the summer of 1849 there was a major cholera epidemic in the Netherlands, which began in Zaandam. The beggars founded in Veenhuizen alone, there were 332 patients, 176 of whom are deceased.
- In 1866 was an epidemic in the Netherlands 21,000 victims. In the city were Amsterdam, despite the 10 years previously begun distribution of sea water, to mourn 1151 deaths.
- From 1881 to 1896, according to dr. AJ Wall cholera 250,000 victims in Europe and at least 50,000 in America. Cholera claimed 267 890 lives in Russia (1892); 120,000 in Spain; 90,000 in Japan and 60,000 in Persia. In Egypt cholera claimed more than 58,000 lives. The outbreak of 1892 in Hamburg, Germany killed 8,600 people. Although commonly found guilty of around grabbing epidemic, the city remained largely unchanged. This was the last serious outbreak of cholera in Europe.
- In 2008 and 2009, a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe at least 4,000 victims.
- In 2010 and 2011 there was an outbreak of cholera in Haiti. Here are approximately 500,000 people became ill and more than 7,000 are deceased it.
- In 2011 there was another outbreak of cholera in the Dominican Republic. There were approximately 500 guests flown in for a wedding. They had been under eat another lobster who was infected with cholera who was caught moments before Pedernales Haiti where cholera broke out in 2010.