The greatest outbreak in the last two decades, which occurred in 2007, was believed to be over, but the most recent reappearance has déjà vu written all over it.
Odisha is once more being plagued by cholera. The greatest outbreak in the last two decades, which occurred in 2007, was believed to be over, but the most recent reappearance has déjà vu written all over it. At least five districts with dozens of villages each reported everyday incidence.
To date, it has claimed the lives of more than a dozen people. The official figures are, of course, lower. The water-borne disease started in Rayagada, the district in the centre of the outbreak 15 years ago, before it spread to other districts. The majority of this year’s outbreak has once again been concentrated in tribally dominant areas, where the socioeconomic indicators are not encouraging, revealing huge gaps in the State’s healthcare delivery system. Only until people started dying from the sickness did the administration realise how ineffective it was and take action. Cholera is endemic to Odisha, and the bacterium that causes it, Vibrio cholera, has previously been linked to several strains in a number of different districts.
According to a study released by Cambridge University Press last year, between 2000 and 2014, the State documented at least 30 epidemics. The worst year was 2007, when it only afflicted 8,000 or so people but resulted in 162 fatalities. Over 46,000 persons contracted the disease in 2014. The outbreak of cholera in 2022, a disease once linked to India’s destitute condition under the British Raj, would not sit well with Odisha, which wants to move up the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) ladder. According to the World Health Organization, the illness continues to pose a threat to public health on a global scale and serves as a sign of inequality and a lack of social progress.
Cholera has centred on access to clean water and sanitation practises more than it has on poor health care delivery, which is why its recurrence in areas predominately populated by tribal populations casts a negative light on the State’s social sectors. The government may have boasted about its model health insurance or drink-from-the-tap programmes, but there is still much to be done to ensure that those living in remote areas have access to safe drinking water and stop the loss of lives from this easily treatable disease.
Prasanta Patnaik 
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