3 ms·
Note that the headline is saying that the Yemen cholera epidemic is the worst in recorded history by number of cases. I assume rehydration salts are available a
by sbierwagen 9y ago
Note that the headline is saying that the Yemen cholera epidemic is the worst in recorded history by number of cases. I assume rehydration salts are available and being used by the simple fact that the case fatality rate is fairly low-- 0.26%. Seasonal flu, by comparison, has a CFR of ~0.1%.
Cholera before rehydration salts could be quite deadly-- as recently as 1974, Yemen reported a CFR of 16.67%: http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.177 http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.177
(Some of the numbers reported in that table are oddly high-- Vietnam reported a CFR of 100% in 1954, then 4.32% ten years later. They're not showing the denominator, so the hundred percent figure could be just from a handful of cases. Reminds me of Ebola, which was thought to be a death sentence from the awful CFRs reported from small outbreaks, but brought down to a "mere" 25% with aggressive treatment in Western hospitals.)