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Shortly after news of the cholera outbreak in Haiti became public, efforts to provide aid to an already struggling country intensified. While organizations like BWH and Partners In Health responded by sending more providers and supplies to the affected areas of Haiti, other, and equally important efforts, were based right here in Boston.
A team of researchers from BWH, MGH and Harvard Medical School, along with colleagues from Haiti, determined the entire genetic code of the Haitian strain, findings which appear in the Dec. 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. They found that the strain of cholera prevalent in Haiti produces a toxin that is genetically identical to the toxin produced by an especially lethal strain of cholera found in India in 2006.
“An implication of this result is that it was human activities that brought the virulent strain from South Asia to Haiti,” said Matthew Waldor, MD, PhD, an investigator in BWH’s Channing Laboratory. “Knowing that the outbreak was triggered by humans rather than something else, such as a climate-related event, will help us prevent a similar outbreak from occurring in the future.”
Waldor and his fellow researchers say one possible way to curb the spread of disease would be to give antibiotics or vaccines to security forces or relief workers who travel from areas where cholera is highly endemic to areas where cholera is not found.
“I have been very involved in advocating for the use of vaccines to prevent or slow the spread of cholera,” said Waldor. “One area that deserves attention is making an even better vaccine, as well as having enough vaccines available that we could readily employ them to stop or prevent an epidemic in areas of high risk.”