Millions of cases of cholera in Yemen … and the African cause!

The researchers found that the cholera strain causing the outbreak in Yemen was the worst in history. It came from East Africa and should come from migrants.

Millions of cholera cases in YemenResearchers at the Wilckam Sanger Institute and the Institut Pasteur in France used gene sequencing techniques and found themselves better able to estimate the risk of cholera in areas such as Yemen, giving more authorities to intervene.

"Knowing how cholera is spread around the world gives us the opportunity to better prepare ourselves for future outbreaks," said Professor Nick Thompson, professor at the Sanger Institute and co-author of the 39, study at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

In Yemen, in nearly four years of war, about 1.2 million cases of cholera have been reported since 2017 and 2,515 deaths.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned in October that the spread of cholera was again on the rise, with around 10,000 suspected cases being reported each week, double the average of the first eight months of 2018.

The cholera strain is badociated with migrantsTo examine the origins of the spread, the Sanger Institute and the Institut Pasteur collected genetically serialized samples of cholera bacteria from Yemen and neighboring areas. This included samples from a Yemeni refugee center at the Saudi border and including 74 other cholera samples from South Asia, the Middle East and East and Central Africa.

The team, which published the findings in the journal Nature, then compared these sequences to a global group of more than 1,000 cholera samples and discovered that the strain causing the epidemic at the time of Yemen was linked to a strain discovered in 2012 in South Asia and was spreading around the world.

However, the researchers found that the Yemeni strain did not come directly from South Asia, but spread and caused waves of infection in East Africa in 2013 and 2014 before appearing. in Yemen in 2016.

"Genomics has allowed us to discover that the cholera strain responsible for the devastating epidemic in Yemen is probably related to the migration of people from East Africa to Yemen," said Thomson, adding that "the available samples do not allow the team to determine where the strain comes from." In East Africa ".