Abstract
Vietnam is the first and only country in the world to regularly use oral cholera vaccines (OCVs) in their cholera control program. From 1998 to 2012, more than 10.9 million doses of the locally produced OCV were deployed in the country through its public health system. We present an overview of cholera epidemiology in Vietnam and the development and deployment of the OCV. Since 1997, the number of cholera cases in Vietnam has declined, in association with increased OCV use as well as improvements in socioeconomic and water and sanitation conditions. It is not possible to establish the relative contributions of each of these to the reduction in cholera rates. Hue, the only province to use OCVs consistently every year, has not reported any cholera case since 2003. As WHO organizes a stockpile of OCV for use in emergencies and recommends the use of OCVs together with traditional means of control, the experience in Vietnam will be helpful to other at-risk countries as they look towards adopting the vaccine in their cholera control programs.
Highlights
N We present an overview of cholera epidemiology in Vietnam and the development and deployment of the oral cholera vaccine (OCV)
N As World Health Organization (WHO) organizes a stockpile of OCV for use in emergencies and recommends the use of OCVs together with traditional means of control, the experience in Vietnam will be helpful to other at-risk countries as they look towards adopting the vaccine in their cholera control programs
Cholera has been endemic in Vietnam since 1964, when V. cholerae O1 El Tor was first identified in the country
Summary
Dang Duc Anh, Anna Lena Lopez2*, Hung Thi Mai Tran, Nguyen Van Cuong, Vu Dinh Thiem, Mohammad Ali, Jacqueline L. Prior to the Haitian outbreak, countries in Africa and Asia had borne most of the cholera burden, with an estimated 1.4 billion people at risk, 2.8 million cases, and 100,000 to 200,000 deaths occurring annually [1,2]; because of difficulties in surveillance and differences in reporting systems, only 245,393 cases with 3,034 deaths were reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2012 [1] This figure does not include the large number of acute watery diarrhoea cases reported in Asia, of which a significant proportion is caused by Vibrio cholerae. Authors might include patient advocacy groups, healthcare workers, or non-governmental organizations
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