Issued by: APO Group
This year, cholera hotspots are set to be identified in five African countries to inform the development of a roadmap for the prevention, control and elimination of this aggressive and prolonged infectious disease in Africa.
According to UNICEF, over 178,000 cases of cholera have been confirmed in 16 countries in Eastern and Southern African countries between January 2024 and March 2025.
“We need to identify areas of cholera concentration and, importantly, the different factors contributing to its spread, said Dr Isaac Choge, senior technical officer in the Emergency Preparedness and Response Division at Africa CDC.
Cholera is a bacterial disease that is usually spread through contaminated water and can be fatal. While anyone can be infected, recent trends suggest that people living near international borders, as well as those living near international lakes and rivers are of particular interest due to their mobility patterns.
Backed by resources made available through the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Task Force on Cholera Control (GTFCC), support is set for the third quarter of 2025 for cholera control in Uganda, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Ghana, and for elimination in Rwanda, where insufficient identification of high areas of cholera concentration is hindering efforts to bring the disease under control.
This strategic support will give the required kick-start to National Cholera Plans through specific identification of hotspot areas and requisite action plans. This will only be the start, with more Priority Areas for Multisectoral Interventions (PAMIs) support to an expanded pool of countries in the 2026 year, said Dr Choge.
The selection of countries was based on immediate need, pressure from the Member States, and disease burden. We envisage that all Member States will have their PAMIs in the near future, as this is the intention of Africa CDC’s intention, he said.
The plan was released during the second Public Health Emergency Management (PHEM) seminar, which focused on PAMIs for cholera control in support of Member States and held by the Africa CDC from 18 to 19 March 2025.
In line with the Global Roadmap for Ending Cholera by 2030 — developed by the Global Task Force for Cholera Control, which emphasises the need for targeted, multisectoral interventions in priority areas — multiple stakeholders have been meeting to address the issue of perennial cholera outbreaks in Africa.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization for the African Region (WHO AFRO) have joined forces to share their expertise.
The PAMIs inception meeting was attended by selected technical leaders from the Central, Eastern, Southern and Western Regional Coordinating Centres (RCCs), as well as the Emergency Preparedness and Response teams, to identify PAMIs across the continent.
Training EPR technical leaders is a crucial step in developing and maximising the impact of national control and elimination plans for cholera, said Dr Fred Kapaya, a cholera expert from WHO AFRO who facilitated the training.
He said that the objective of the workshop was to increase the pool of PAMI experts who can be utilised as Trainers of Trainers to deliver training at the Member State level, strengthen collaboration and contribute to efforts to eliminate cholera by 2030.
“We intend to save money by preventing cholera outbreaks rather than responding to them by providing holistic support to health programmes in affected communities, outside of direct healthcare,” said Dr Choge.
