Vaccination provides an effective, long-lasting immunity and is necessary for military personnel. Prevention also requires cleanliness and louse killing measures. This is a recent disease, with its history largely confined to the last two hundred years. The causative organism is a Spirillaceae bacterium. Cholera was originally confined to India early in the nineteenth century.
Humans are the only known host for the cholera vibrio .
The disease must be maintained by an unbroken chain of mild or subclinical infections. The true home on endemic cholera is the Yangtze River Valley in China and the delta of the Ganges in India. Cholera remains endemic in Asia, the Middle East, Africa. It is spread by water, seafood, and other foodstuffs contaminated with the excrement of infected persons. The composer Tchaikovsky is said to have died of it in 1893 after drinking unboiled tap water in Russia.