The world’s stockpile of cholera vaccine lies empty just as 16 countries battle outbreaks of the deadly bacterial illness, Reuters reports.

“The world’s oral cholera vaccine stocks have dried up,” Daniela Garone, MD, international medical coordinator of the humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), said in a news release. “This directly affects MSF teams as we are trying to respond to an extraordinary number of cholera outbreaks, including in Ethiopia, Sudan, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.”

Currently, as country requests for cholera vaccines mount, the ability to manufacture more is limited to the sole approved cholera vaccine maker, EuBiologics Co. of South Korea, leaving MSF “extremely concerned.”

“All the doses in production until mid-March have already been allocated, and the demand for doses keeps growing,” Garone said. “Today, we’re still desperate for more manufacturers to jump in and urgently produce oral cholera vaccines, and it’s essential that more technical support be provided for new manufacturers to speed up regulatory processes and scale up production capacity.”

A UNICEF official told Reuters that a deficit of at least 50 million oral cholera vaccine (OCV) doses will persist throughout 2024.

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