Remember him? Not the news broadcaster or the Game of Thrones character, the London doctor who in 1854 identified the source of a Soho cholera epidemic as the local water supply. Though his work was contested for years, it’s now regarded as the ‘founding event of the science of epidemiology‘. Vaccines soon followed, making cholera history.
Except they didn’t. Cholera is once again rocketing, in 34 countries, mostly because of ‘poverty, inequality, conflict and displacement,’ and also ‘because the disease afflicts almost exclusively the poorest countries and communities, [so] the vaccine does not attract investment from developers, for whom it offers little market opportunity.’
Can’t pay? Die of cholera. John Snow would be turning in his grave.
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