One billion people in 43 countries are at risk of contracting cholera, says the UN. The outbreak can be stopped, but according to the United Nations, there is a shortage of the necessary resources.

The World Health Organization has called the outlook bleak and asked the international community to provide 640 million dollars to fight the highly contagious disease.

The longer transfers are delayed, the worse the situation gets, partly because the vaccination campaign has been so delayed.

So far this year, 24 countries have reported outbreaks, compared with 15 at the same time last year. Henry Gray, the WHO’s cholera response coordinator, said that one billion people in 43 countries were at risk of an outbreak.

Countries not normally exposed to cholera have been affected, and the death toll has so far been more than one in a hundred infected.

Gray blames increasing poverty, conflict, and climate change, and the large displacements fueled by these.

He said that responses and actions spread more widely when more countries were affected and pointed to vaccines as an example. The countries had requested 18 million doses, but only eight million were available, leading to a halt in vaccinations.

– It’s a warning. We have a pandemic that is killing the poor, and we know exactly how to stop it. But we need more support and less indifference from the world community. Because if we don’t act, it will get worse, said Jerome Pfaffman Zambruni at Unicef, who is participating with the WHO in the fight against cholera.

(© NTB)