The World Health Organization (WHO) has provided prequalification for a novel inactivated oral vaccine—Euvichol-S—to treat patients with cholera.

Although the novel vaccine has comparable efficacy to existing cholera vaccines, it has a simpler formulation that may enable increased production and administration compared to the existing vaccines—especially in countries such as Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Somalia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, where cases of cholera have been the most prevalent.

In a recent departmental update, the WHO stressed that there were 473,000 cases of cholera reported in 2022—about twice the number of cases reported in 2021—with 700,000 additional cases projected in 2023.

The organization hopes the new vaccine can aid in effectively reducing, controlling, and preventing cholera outbreaks worldwide. “The new prequalification is hoped to enable a rapid increase in production and supply, which many communities battling with cholera outbreaks urgently need,” concluded Rogerio Gaspar, PhD, Director of the Department for Regulation and Prequalification at WHO.