"This can kill by suffocating the patient," says Adelard Shyaka, medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Guinea. "But also the toxin moves through the body and can damage the heart, the kidneys, the nervous system." Such damage - via suffocation, myocarditis, kidney failure, and nerve malfunctioning - means diphtheria is fatal in up to 50% of cases without treatment. The disease, which was a global scourge for much of the 20th century, is also almost entirely preventable through vaccination. After the diphtheria inoculation was included on the World Health Organization's essential vaccine list in the 1970s, cases decreased dramatically worldwide."
"Now, it's an almost forgotten disease," says Shyaka. But that doesn't mean this outbreak is surprising...
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