Predictive Intelligence for Cholera in Ukraine?

Abstract

Cholera, an ancient waterborne diarrheal disease, remains a threat to public health, especially when climate/weather processes, microbiological parameters, and sociological determinants intersect with population vulnerabilities of loss of access to safe drinking water and sanitation infrastructure. The ongoing war in Ukraine has either damaged or severely crippled civil infrastructure, following which the human population is at risk of health disasters. This editorial highlights a perspective on using predictive intelligence to combat potential (and perhaps impending) cholera outbreaks in various regions of Ukraine. Reliable and judicious use of existing earth observations inspired mathematical algorithms integrating heuristic understanding of microbiological, sociological, and weather parameters have the potential to save or reduce the disease burden.

Combating cholera by building predictive capabilities for pathogenic Vibrio cholerae in Yemen

“…The hypothesis shown in Fig. 1 was validated using retrospective data from countries in Africa and Asia over a decadal timeframe, most recently in Ukraine 38 . However, reliable spatial and temporal datasets containing disease prevalence or incidence time series are a major challenge for infectious disease prediction.…”

Environmental Factors Influencing Occurrence of Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Vibrio vulnificus

“…For example, the risk of cholera can now be predicted at the scale of available satellite observation and favorable environmental conditions ( 62 , 63 ). The model was employed to assess the risk of cholera in Ukraine ( 24 ) and Yemen ( 64 ), countries suffering damaged or severely crippled civil infrastructure, following which the human population is at risk of health disasters. It is important to note that both cholera and vibriosis have various routes of environmental transmission, primarily attributed to the ability of V. cholerae to thrive in freshwater through its salinity requirements ( 14 ) and association with a variety of hosts with chitinous exoskeletons ( 6 , 52 ).…”

“…are known to cause infection in humans, with V. cholerae being the etiological agent of cholera, an acute diarrheal disease caused by consumption of food or water containing pathogenic strains of the bacterium. The seventh cholera pandemic is in progress, and the disease continues to plague the modern world, notably when climate/weather processes, microbiological parameters, and sociological determinants intersect with population vulnerabilities and loss of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure ( 24 , 25 ). However, in addition to V. cholerae , V. parahaemolyticus and V. vulnificus have been proven historically significant ( 11 , 26 ).…”

The Trade-Offs of Ukraine's Recovery: Fighting for the Future

“…This is not just a long-term concern; with recovery already underway, haphazard or delayed choices might leave the scores already suffering vulnerable to shorter, repeating disaster timelines. In much of disaster literature, this dark chain of disaster cascade (Pescaroli and Alexander, 2015) would point to a disaster and to ineffective postdisaster recovery as the first domino of new suffering under hazards already faced-such as cholera (Usmani et al, 2022); HIV (Colborne, 2017); the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic (COVID-19) (Chumachenko and Chumachenko, 2022); severe weather (World Bank, Climate Change Knowledge Portal, undated); and technical accidents (Shen and Hwang, 2017), in the case of Ukraine. However, literature that takes a longer-term approach to disaster causality-recognizing that disasters are not natural, episodic events but long processes stemming from existing vulnerabilities-shows disasters are not unexpected, unprecedented, or unpredictable phenomena (Kelman, 2018).…”