Cholera Vaccines

The basic ways of avoiding the disease of cholera are improving the quality of the water supply, good sanitation facility, providing the safety in food, community awareness etc. these are the means of preventing cholera in the long run. The World health organization (WHO) and its partners are in search of new means of preventing this disease. Oral cholera vaccines which have a demonstrated a safety and have proved their effectiveness have recently been made available. Some nations have already immunized populations facing the risk of an outbreak of cholera. The following article emphasizes on Oral Cholera vaccines.

It is evident that the use of oral cholera vaccines is gaining importance and is evolving rapidly. Investigations by the World Health Organization (WHO) are underway to initiate vaccination as a public health strategy. Issues that are currently under discussions are on the problems logistics, costs, timings, production etc. The big question in short is that will mass oral vaccination be able to contain and prevent outbreaks of cholera epidemics.

The oral cholera vaccine has been used in emergency situations but the use of it still remains a challenged. Studies and research by the World Health Organization (WHO) are in progress to prove the effectiveness of the oral cholera vaccine as a public health tool.

Some of the currently existing vaccinations are as follows.

1. WC/rBS vaccine contains a dead whole cell of V. cholerae 01 with purified recombinant B subunit of cholera toxoid. The clinical trials of this vaccine have been performed in the nations of Bangladesh, Peru and Sweden.

2. Variant WC\rBS is actually a result of the transfer of technology, it is a variant of the WC\rBS, and it does not contain any recombinant B-subunit. This vaccine was test in Vietnam in the field trial of 1992-1993. the vaccine showed a protective efficacy of about 66%

3. The CVD 103-HgR vaccine contains attenuated live oral genetically modified V. cholerae 01 strain (CVD 103-HgR). Placebo controlled trails have been counted in many nations. IT is found that this type of vaccine has offered high protection levels. However a large field trial in Indonesia has not given the desired results.

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