Guest post by Kip Hansen — September 20, 2024 — 1500 words
The United Nations World Health Organization is at it again, portraying climate change as the root of all evil:
Here is the claim:
“The number of Cholera deaths The number of deaths reported worldwide last year rose by 71 percent in 2022, while the number of reported cases rose by 13 percent. The increase is largely due to conflict and climate change, the WHO report said. [ NY Times ]
Let’s look at the statistics:
And where did these cholera outbreaks occur in 2023?
I have added the country names for all nations that more than 100 cholera deaths. [For comparison., New York City alone had over 100 pedestrian fatalities in 2023.]
[One oddity is Afghanistan—reported by WHO to have had well over 200,000 cholera cases, and only 101 deaths.]
The World Health Organization has published its annual report entitled “Cholera, 2023 – World Health Organization”. [.pdf].
Important extracts are:
“In 2023, very large outbreaks with >10,000 suspected and confirmed cases per country were reported by 9 countries on 3 continents (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Haiti, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia and Zimbabwe).”
“Conflict, Climate changelimited investment in development and population displacement due to emerging and re-emerging risks all contributed to the increase in the number of cholera outbreaks. This trend reflects a lack of long-term development investment, particularly in Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Cholera outbreaks show that the Sustainable Development Goals for WASH are not on track to achieve the 2030 targets, despite the United Nations General Assembly recognizing in 2010 that access to safe drinking water and sanitation is a fundamental human right.”
“The rise in cases in Southern Africa that began in 2022 continued into 2023, with the outbreak expanding in Malawi (32 530), while Mozambique (39 101), South Africa (1478), Zambia (4531) and Zimbabwe (14 148) all reported the highest number of cases in ≥5 years. It is notable that the outbreaks, with some significant subnational exceptions, occurred in stable areas not affected by conflict. Long-term investments in Climate change– resilient WASH systems could significantly reduce the risk of renewed outbreaks in these areas.”
The entire 14-page WHO report mentions climate change as a general theme only in the two places cited above. What the WHO means by “climate change” is bad weather conditions – there has been no change in the local or regional climate – usually too much rain causing flooding – which is common in East Africa.
Cholera is caused by “People living in places with unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation, and inadequate hygiene are most at risk.” “Cholera is an intestinal infection caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae.” “People usually get cholera by drinking water or eating food that contains traces of feces from a person with cholera. The disease can spread rapidly in areas where sewage and drinking water are not adequately treated. … Cholera is unlikely to be transmitted from person to person or through casual contact with someone who has cholera.” [ CDC ]
In plain language: If human excrement (feces) enters the drinking water supply, cholera can break out.Cholera is not (usually) transmitted from person to person like flu or colds.
And it is true that flooding in underdeveloped countries can overwhelm both the sanitation (human waste disposal) and drinking water infrastructure. Unfortunately, in many areas there are simply NO proper sanitation facilities and NO clean drinking water supplies. The lack of such infrastructure means that people use dug latrines and hand-dug wells, or fetch water from streams and lakes.
The New York Times article claims, “The spread of cholera in southern Africa has been fueled by catastrophic weather events such as floods and droughts.” For reference, another earlier New York Times article provides no evidence for this claim, but only states, “The destruction is due to increasingly violent storms, a lack of vaccines and inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure, health experts say.”
And here we have two of the real main causes of cholera outbreaks:
1. Poor or non-existent supply of clean drinking water and inadequate or non-existent sewage infrastructure
2. A shortage of cholera vaccines (exacerbated by the lack of public health care infrastructure).
The third major factor is conflict-related population displacement, which pushes people into refugee camps and already overcrowded cities.
The invisible “violent storms” did not affect the vast area of our world map showing cholera outbreaks. The 2023 North African monsoon (.pptx file) was “above average” but not catastrophic, just a bit wetter. The 2024 African monsoon was not particularly wet in most areas:
The map of cholera outbreaks itself is a small piece of evidence against the claim that they are caused by climate change. Haiti occupies one-third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, the other two-thirds of the island is the Dominican Republic. Haiti has one major cholera outbreak, the Dominican Republic has none. They share the island, its weather, and its climate. However, Haiti is far poorer, has basically no functioning central government, and is prone to lawlessness, especially in the cities. The Dominican Republic is equally poor, but not as poor as Haiti. They have a functioning democracy and a more or less reliable, if flawed, civil service.
Sudan, a generally very dry country, is one of the worst affected countries, with a very high mortality rate. Flooding occurs regularly like clockwork in the monsoon season in Sudan, as can be seen in the image of the African monsoon above – with a broad band of higher rainfall in the middle of the country.
“Flooding is a challenge in Sudan every August and September. Around this time each year, monsoon rains pour into the Ethiopian highlands and flow as far as the Blue and White Nile. As the rivers make their way north through Sudan and South Sudan,Floods often inundate communities along river banks.”
“The annual floods occurred again in 2024. But this time, heavy rains also fell in the north of the country, triggering destructive flash floods in areas not used to such heavy rainfall.” [ source ]
The armed conflict has severely affected the country's economy and its ability to respond to humanitarian needs – this means limited health services such as vaccinations and inadequate or no repair of sanitation and drinking water infrastructure.
Finally, the following floods occur in Sudan during the monsoon season:
The flow of the Victoria Nile – the headwaters of the Nile, the southern end of the Nile rivers – is controlled mainly by dams in Uganda (shown in white on the map on the left) and the GERD dam in Ethiopia. Almost literally all the rain that falls in the annual monsoon west of the Horn of Africa flows into Sudan, a country torn in half by civil war.
Because of poverty at all levels, personal, family, national and regional, these areas are vulnerable to cholera outbreaks when severe weather strikes or people are forced to flee their homes due to conflict.
Conclusion:
Cholera outbreaks are not caused by climate change. There is no evidence of climate change in the cholera outbreak areas.
Cholera is caused by the presence of Vibrio cholerae, a bacterium, in drinking water supplies (sometimes in food that has been prepared with contaminated water or washed in contaminated water). This is caused by the contamination of drinking water with human feces. The contamination of drinking water with human feces (and thus the bacterium) is the result of poor or non-existent infrastructure for safe drinking water and wastewater treatment (infrastructure defined by the UN WHO as WASH).
Any disruption of civil society Cholera outbreaks can occur in areas lacking adequate clean drinking water and sanitation infrastructure. These include weather events (floods, severe droughts), armed conflict (or even the threat of armed conflict), breakdown of normal civil governance, among others.
To make matters worse, there is a global shortage of cholera vaccines and difficulties in providing and administering these vaccines in cholera-affected areas.
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Author’s comment:
As usual, the United Nations World Health Organization uses climate crisis language, as required by the UN-enforced narrative that all bad things are caused by climate change. Any undesirable weather is presented as evidence of climate change – even normal weather for the affected region.
Weather, whether expected or rare, is not climate change. If rainforests were to form in Sudan or other normally dry regions of Africa within a few decades, or if there were some other significant change in the Köppen climate type, that would be climate and environmental change. Even then, that change would not cause cholera—cholera is not caused by climate type.
The UN and all its affiliated organizations are important suppliers of Propaganda about the climate crisisthereby adding fuel to the fire fanned by the US National Public Radio, the UK BBC, the Australian ABC and several international climate propaganda news cabals.
Weather is not climate; diseases are neither caused nor spread by climate change.
Thanks for reading.
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