

Surveillance in Africa

The World Health Organization (WHO) maintains a public database of cholera cases and provides outbreak updates and an annual summary of aggregate national data in the Weekly Epidemiological Record.

The reports provide relatively consistent national and regional profiles of cholera over time, and reflect the success and failure of efforts toward its prevention and control but underestimate the true number of cholera illnesses that occur.

WHO estimates that the officially reported cases of cholera represent only 5–10% of the actual number occurring annually worldwide because of inadequate laboratory and epidemiological surveillance systems and economic, social and political disincentives to case reporting 1.


  1. Ali M, Lopez A, You Y, Kim Y, Sah B, Maskery B, Clemens J. The global burden of cholera. Bull World Health Organ. 2012;90:209-18A.