The following is adapted from Chapter 4 of the author’s book “Fear of a Microbial Planet: How a Germophobic Safety Culture Makes Us Less Safe.” When cholera broke out in London in the first half of the nineteenth century, experts were quick to place the blame on miasma—the accumulation of toxic gases and odors within the…

JOHANNESBURG—The death toll from a cholera outbreak in Malawi has crossed 1,300, a senior Malawian health official said on Thursday, as the southern African country battles its deadliest outbreak yet. As of Wednesday, Malawi had recorded 40,284 cholera cases and 1,316 deaths in an outbreak that started in March 2022, with the country averaging over…

Homeopathy is a form of healing developed by German physician and chemist Samuel Hahnemann in the late 1790s. Its application significantly reduced the mortality rate of cholera patients during the cholera epidemic in London between the years 1848 and 1854. Studies have also shown that homeopathy can help patients infected with COVID-19 have a fast recovery….

BLANTYRE, Malawi—Malawi has delayed the opening of public schools in the southern African country’s two major cities of Blantyre and Lilongwe, the health minister said Monday, to try to slow down a surge in cholera deaths. The total number of cases and deaths has accelerated to 17,824 and 595 respectively since cases were first reported…

GENEVA—There have been 16 confirmed deaths from cholera in Haiti and 32 confirmed cases, a United Nations spokesperson said on Tuesday, citing the latest figures from U.N. humanitarian workers there. “We are very, very concerned,” Margaret Harris of the World Health Organization, who spoke at a news conference with the U.N. spokesperson, added with reference…

BLANTYRE—Cholera has spread to 22 of Malawi’s 28 districts, killing 110 people and infecting 3,891 people since March when the first case was reported, the health minister said on Tuesday. The first case of the debilitating infection, which spreads mainly through contaminated food and water, was reported in March in the southern district of Machinga….

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—Haiti’s government on Sunday announced that at least eight people have died from cholera, raising concerns about a potentially fast-spreading scenario and reviving memories of an epidemic that killed nearly 10,000 people a decade ago. The cases—the first cholera deaths reported in three years—came in a community called Dekayet in southern Port-au-Prince and in…

GENEVA—Cholera cases have surged this year, especially in places of poverty and conflict, with outbreaks reported in 26 countries, and fatality rates rising sharply, a World Health Organization official said on Friday. In a typical year, fewer than 20 countries report outbreaks of the disease which is spread by the ingestion of contaminated food or…

AMMAN—Syria said on Monday that 29 people had died of cholera in what the United Nations has called the worst outbreak of the disease in the war-torn country for years. Rapid assessment testing has confirmed 338 cases since the outbreak was first recorded last month, Syria’s health ministry said in a statement, with the bulk…

BEIJING—Detection in the Chinese city of Wuhan of a bacteria that caused cholera in a student and was separately found in samples from softshell turtles at a food market has struck a sensitive nerve with ordinary Chinese people, with some relating it to COVID-19. The food market where samples from softshell turtles tested positive of…