WHO Cholera Vaccine Stockpile Used For First Time In S. Sudan

“Last year, the World Health Organization established a two million dose cholera vaccine stockpile for the first time. Cholera outbreaks can be fast and explosive, and if communities are not prepared, they can be deadly. This week the WHO announced the vaccines from the stockpile are currently being given to nearly 140,000 people in two internally displaced persons camps in South Sudan,” Helen Matzger, a senior program officer on the Vaccine Delivery Team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, writes in the foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog. “…Health prevention does not often make the news because there is no health crisis to write about. While South Sudan is in the news for other reasons, hopefully cholera will not be one of them thanks to this preventive use of the vaccine” (2/26).

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