Three cases of cholera have been reported, all on Geoje Island, South Gyeongsang Province. Fortunately, the disease often associated with developing countries so far appears contained. The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) tracked the source of contamination down to the seawater off some shores of the island.
The stool samples from the three patients proved to be a 97.8 percent match to those of seawater samples in a DNA check. Numbers above 95 percent are regarded as a positive match.
The question is how the bacteria ended up in Geoje waters.
Tracking the route through which the bacteria enter the area before infections occur is as important as tracking the human contamination route because both help fight the spread of diseases and plug the holes for an onslaught next time. Officials in charge of anti-infectious diseases have not been good with this basic duty. The previous outbreak occurred in 2001 and the source of infection was a cook, who, not being aware of being infected, prepared food in a restaurant in North Gyeongsang Province. Over 140 people came down with the disease. Then as now, no entry route was confirmed.
KCDC sleuths are all out but without success, some complaining that it is comparable to an attempt to find a needle in a haystack. They suggested three possible routes. The first is discharged ballast water from vessels. Ships occasionally take in or discharge water to maintain balance so, as the theory goes, the bacteria travel with the ships and contaminate the Geoje waters when the ballast tanks are emptied. One question that is puzzling is why Geoje is contaminated when Pusan, the nation’s biggest port, is not.
The second is that crewmembers of vessels on port calls are infected and their stool is discharged instead of being treated and stored in a septic tank as required. Port officials dismiss it as a remote possibility. The third is that cholera bacteria move along warm currents originating from Southeast Asia. As a matter of fact, traces of nontoxic cholera bacteria were detected in a coastal seawater survey in 2011.
True, cholera is transmitted through contact with the feces of patients or from drinking contaminated water but the high standard of personal and public hygiene we enjoy by and large prevents the occurrence of the disease. When it does occur, these public and personal safeguards block it from spreading uncontrollably.
Scientists believe that higher-than-average water temperatures may be a major contributing factor. The likelihood is that the nation’s weather is getting hotter meaning that cholera and other heat-sensitive diseases may be on the rise. Clueless health officials can only make the situation worse as shown in the case of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) epidemic.