Tropical Travel Trouble 006 Watery Diarrhoea

LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog aka Tropical Travel Trouble 006 Our medical student who caught shigella on a Nepalese elective has a thirst for adventure. They plan to help at a Bangladesh refugee camp but the latest CDC report states there have been some cases of cholera. They’ve done a little bit of reading and want your help to teach them all about cholera and how they may prepare and best serve their new community. Questions: Q1. What is cholera and how is it transmitted? Answer and interpretation expand(document.getElementById('ddet1570906629'));expand(document.getElementById('ddetlink1570906629')) Cholera is a gram-negative comma-shaped bacillus. Sero groups 01 and 0139 cause clinical disease.  Humans are the only animal host. Arguably it is present in some shellfish and plankton but the main transmission is contaminated food/water from infected faeces. John Snow from epidemiological fame (not Game of Thrones) challenged the theory that cholera was in the air and due to “miasma“, he thought it was a contaminant in water. When cholera returned to London in 1853, Snow recognised an ideal opportunity to test his hypothesis by comparing cholera mortality rates in populations of south London supplied by water drawn from sewage-contaminated versus uncontaminated regions of the Thames. On 30 August 1854 while involved in these studies...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Clinical Cases Tropical Medicine cholera diarrhoea john snow ORS rice water diarrhoea watery diarrhoea Source Type: blogs