The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was awarded a four-year, $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to promote the effective use of oral cholera vaccine around the world. The Delivering Oral Vaccine Effectively (DOVE) program will provide relief agencies and governments with technical assistance on how to use oral cholera vaccine, evaluate current vaccine-use practices and develop new field surveillance methods for monitoring and controlling outbreaks of the disease.
Cholera is an infectious disease caused by drinking unsanitary water. The disease is estimated to be responsible for between 100,000 to 200,000 deaths worldwide each year and infects as many as 2.5 million people annually. The oral cholera vaccine is over 70 percent effective and costs $1.85 per dose, but is not yet widely used in preventing outbreaks.