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Cholera Resurges Across 26 Countries as Deaths Double Despite Fewer Cases

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A global cholera resurgence is claiming more lives than last year, despite a drop in reported infections, according to a new situation report from the World Health Organization (WHO). The report, released today, reveals that 211,678 cases and 2,754 deaths were reported from January to May 25 across 26 countries—spanning Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, and South-East Asia.

In May alone, more than 52,500 new cholera and acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) cases were reported from 17 countries—a 35% spike compared to April. While this represents a 24% drop in infections from May 2024, cholera-related deaths more than doubled over the same period, rising by 122%.

The surge underscores the fragility of public health systems in conflict zones and climate-affected areas, where access to clean water, sanitation, and healthcare remains limited. The African Region continues to bear the highest burden, with over 117,000 cases and nearly 2,500 deaths so far this year. South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Angola are among the hardest-hit nations.

In South Sudan alone, 51,054 cases and 973 deaths have been reported since the start of the year. The country recorded nearly 10,000 new cases and 190 deaths in May, the highest among all reporting nations. The DRC reported over 6,300 new cases and 128 deaths during the same period, driven by outbreaks in conflict-ridden provinces such as South Kivu, Tshopo, and Haut-Katanga.

Sudan saw a dramatic 278% jump in cases in May, with new infections rising to 6,806 and deaths increasing by 41%. The ongoing conflict in the country has damaged water infrastructure, delayed humanitarian responses, and left large swathes of the population without access to care.

“Cholera is thriving in the cracks of our global health system,” a WHO official said, noting that fragile surveillance systems, insufficient vaccines, and limited response capacity are exacerbating the crisis.

Despite an average monthly stockpile of 5.7 million Oral Cholera Vaccine (OCV) doses—above the emergency threshold—demand is outstripping supply. In the first five months of 2025 alone, 26 countries collectively requested 33 million doses, nearly triple the volume requested in all of 2024. Almost all vaccination campaigns this year have been single-dose due to constrained supply.

The WHO and its partners have deployed dozens of experts to affected countries, supported public health training, and coordinated cross-border surveillance and community engagement. But the response continues to be hampered by security concerns, funding shortfalls, and exhausted national health systems already stretched by other emergencies.

In Malawi, public frustration is rising in crowded markets where waste management and water access are poor. In the eastern DRC, misinformation around water chlorination is complicating efforts to control transmission. WHO reports that community trust is eroding due to inconsistent communication and a lack of locally tailored media engagement.

Cholera is often seen as a disease of the past, yet in 2025 it remains a deadly threat in many parts of the world. WHO is calling for greater investment in preparedness and prevention—including vaccine production, WASH infrastructure, and robust health systems—arguing that short-term responses alone cannot stop the recurring cycles of outbreak.

“This isn’t just a health issue—it’s a crisis of equity,” the WHO report notes. “Until the world commits to addressing the underlying drivers of cholera, millions will remain at risk.”

The global risk level for cholera remains “very high,” according to the WHO. An estimated one billion people are currently at risk.

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Why you feel dizzy when you stand up

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Why you feel dizzy when you stand up?

A young, healthy patient asked me: “Doc, sometimes when I stand up from the bed too fast, my vision goes completely black for two seconds and I get dizzy. Am I having a mini-stroke?”

No, it is actually proof that your nervous system is working perfectly.

The exact neurovascular cascade behind why your vision blacks out when you stand up too fast and why you don’t actually pass out. 👇

• The Gravity Drop: When you are lying down, your heart pumps blood easily on a flat plane. The moment you stand up abruptly, gravity instantly pulls about 500 to 800 mL of your blood straight down into your legs.

Why you feel dizzy when you stand up
Why you feel dizzy when you stand up. Credit: Nurse Miriam

• The Transient Drain: This sudden pooling means less blood returns to your heart, which temporarily means less blood is pumped up to your head. For a split second, your brain experiences a drop in pressure.

• The Visual Blackout: The retina (the back of your eye) is incredibly sensitive to oxygen and pressure changes. When the blood pressure dips, the retina temporarily shuts down to conserve energy which is exactly why your vision goes black or static.

• The Baroreceptor Rescue: Luckily, you have pressure sensors (baroreceptors) in your neck. Within milliseconds, they detect the blood pressure drop and fire a panic signal to your brainstem.

• The Sympathetic Snap: Your autonomic nervous system instantly kicks in. It violently constricts the blood vessels in your legs and spikes your heart rate, physically squeezing the blood right back up to your brain. Vision restored.

Summary:

First time this happened to me I genuinely thought I was dying.
Turns out my body was just buffering.
Knowing the science changes everything

Here’s what’s actually happening:

When you stand up quickly, gravity pulls blood downward. Your body briefly has less blood reaching the brain. Your nervous system — specifically the baroreceptors –detects this drop and rapidly triggers your heart to beat faster and your blood vessels to constrict, restoring blood flow within seconds.
The momentary blackout and dizziness is just that brief gap before the correction kicks in.

👉Hi, I am Dr. Priyam. I break down complex medical science and advocate for Evidence-Based Medicine. FOLLOW ME for more clinical facts.

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Two A+ Parents, One O- Baby? The Blood Type “Scandal” That’s Actually Just Science

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can a+ and a+ give birth to o+ or O negative?

It’s a panic that lands in clinics and WhatsApp groups far too often: “Both of us are A positive… how is our child O negative? Did the lab mess up? Or is something else going on?”

The short, reassuring answer is no lab error, no mystery, and no betrayal. This outcome is completely possible under normal genetics. Here’s why the “math” actually maths perfectly once we look at what blood-type tests really reveal.

Your blood type is decided by two separate systems that most people only see the final phenotype of, not the hidden genes.
ABO system 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸

can a+ and a+ give birth to o+
can a+ and a+ give birth to o+ or O negative?

Type A means you carry at least one A allele. You could be AA or AO. The O allele is recessive and invisible in your test result. If both you and your partner are AO (very common), each of you has a 50 % chance of passing the O allele. When both pass O, the child is blood group O. Roughly 45–50 % of people with type A are actually AO carriers, so this pairing happens every day.

Rh (positive/negative) system 🩸🩸🩸
“Positive” means you have the dominant D antigen. You can still be heterozygous Dd and carry the recessive d allele. If both parents are Dd, there is a 25 % chance the child inherits d from both and is Rh negative. About 15 % of people are Rh negative, which means a large portion of “positive” people quietly carry the d gene.

When both parents are A positive but heterozygous for both traits (AO and Dd), an O-negative child is not only possible — it is mathematically expected in a predictable percentage of pregnancies. The child simply received the two recessive alleles that were hiding in plain sight in both parents.
Blood-group reports show only what antigens are expressed on red cells. They do not sequence your DNA or tell you whether you are homozygous or heterozygous. That hidden information is what allows “impossible” combinations to appear regularly in perfectly ordinary families.

This is basic Mendelian inheritance, not infidelity or laboratory failure. The same recessive-gene logic explains blue-eyed children born to brown-eyed parents or curly-haired kids from straight-haired couples. It is science doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

If the result still feels unsettling, a simple conversation with your doctor or a genetics counsellor can walk you through your specific probabilities. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however, the only thing that needs updating is the outdated assumption that blood types behave like simple labels instead of the elegant, recessive-carrying system they actually are.

Your O-negative child is not evidence of a mistake. They are proof that genetics loves surprises — and that love (and science) are doing just fine.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Dr Parveen Yograj

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Why does BCG vaccine leave a scar?

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Why does BCG vaccine leave a scar?

That scar on your arm is a battlefield, and the chemistry of how it forms is completely different from any other vaccine you’ve ever received.

Most vaccines inject dead or weakened pathogens into your muscle. Your immune system sees the threat, builds antibodies, done. No lasting damage to the tissue. The BCG tuberculosis vaccine does something radically different. It injects live Mycobacterium bovis bacteria directly into the top layer of your skin, the dermis, and then lets them multiply.

Why does BCG vaccine leave a scar?
Why does BCG vaccine leave a scar?

For the first six weeks, those bacteria are actively replicating at the injection site. Your immune system detects them and sends macrophages to engulf the invaders. T-cells get recruited to the area. Then something happens that no other routine vaccine triggers: your body builds granulomas. Those are organized clusters of immune cells that physically wall off the bacteria like a biological quarantine zone. The immune system can’t fully kill every bacterium, so it builds a containment structure around them instead.

That containment war destroys tissue. The granulomas break down the dermis. A blister forms, then an open ulcer that weeps for weeks. The entire process from injection to final scar takes about three months. What you’re left with is the structural aftermath of your immune system demolishing a section of its own skin to contain a live bacterial colony.

The wild part: 4 billion doses administered since 1921. 100 million newborns receive it every year. And the size of your scar correlates with how strong your immune response was. Studies in West Africa found that infants who developed a visible scar had half the mortality rate of infants who didn’t. Not just from TB. From everything. The scar tissue itself became a marker that your immune system trained correctly.

That circular mark is the one vaccine scar that actually means something went right. Your body fought a live infection in a controlled space, won, and left the evidence on your skin for life.

Aakash Gupta

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