Though the cause of cholera is known and its treatment is well understood and inexpensive, efforts to contain it are often stymied by politics, poor planning or poor infrastructure. Water systems across the nation were soon contaminated with the bacteria passed in human waste, leading to a breathtaking cumulative 745,558 diagnosed cases of the disease by July 2015, causing 8,972 deaths. The microbe’s most horrible 21st-century toll continues to unfold today in Haiti, where Vibrio cholera was unwittingly introduced by Nepali United Nations peacekeepers bivouacked alongside a river tributary after the 2010 earthquake. Two centuries later, it is in its seventh pandemic. Having appeared only in Bengal, cholera made its first pandemic leap in 1817, during British rule in India. And the disease happens to be making its mark all over the world today, from ISIS-controlled territories in Syria and Iraq to Cuban prisons. The 300 percent jump in cholera cases is especially troubling - that deadly microbe devastated England nearly as much as the plague, claiming thousands of lives, especially in London. The past five years had apparently witnessed a 136 percent increase in scarlet fever cases, a remarkable 300 percent rise in the confirmed cases of cholera along with reported occurrences of other once-vanquished diseases like tuberculosis, measles and whooping cough.
Over Christmas, headlines across Britain screamed that Victorian-era diseases had returned.
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