Predicting cholera outbreaks

A new study into the linkages between rain, temperature and cholera shows scientists may be able to predict epidemics in time to save people from the life-threatening disease. After analysing several years of disease and weather data from cholera-endemic areas of Zanzibar, Tanzania, scientists from the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) in Seoul, Korea, found that if a more than one degree Celsius increase in the average monthly minimum temperature and a 200mm increase in monthly rainfall were recorded in a month, a cholera outbreak was imminent in the following month. “A mere one degree Celsius increase in the average monthly minimum temperatures was a warning sign that cholera cases were likely to double within four months,” said Mohammad Ali, a senior scientist at IVI, and one of the authors of the study published in the June 2011 issue of the American...