Nigeria’s Federal Government submitted four emergency requests for oral cholera vaccines to the International Coordinating Group on Vaccine Provision as the country battled a worsening outbreak in 2025, a new World Health Organisation report has revealed. As of 26 October, Nigeria had recorded 22,102 suspected cholera cases and 500 deaths, giving a Case Fatality Rate of 2.3 per cent, with 1,320 cases and 33 deaths reported in just the preceding 28 days.
The report situates Nigeria’s crisis within a broader global surge, noting that 565,404 cases and 7,074 deaths were reported across 32 countries in five WHO regions during the review period. The Eastern Mediterranean Region was the worst hit, followed by the African Region, South‑East Asia, the Americas and the Western Pacific.
In October alone, 13 African countries reported 13,253 new cholera cases, a drop compared with September, but with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola and South Sudan posting the highest burdens. From January to late October, 21 African countries logged 223,452 cases and 4,955 deaths, with South Sudan, the DRC and Angola again topping the list, while Nigeria contributed 33 of the 272 deaths recorded in October.
Despite surging demand, the global stockpile of oral cholera vaccines averaged 7.9 million doses in October, remaining above the five‑million‑dose minimum reserve for emergency use. Between January and October 2025, 50 emergency requests were submitted to the ICG, more than double the 20 requests received in 2024, with Nigeria and countries such as Angola, Chad, the DRC, Ethiopia, Ghana, South Sudan and Sudan jointly asking for about 67 million doses.
Of these, 46 requests – totalling 49 million doses – were approved, while four were declined, reflecting ongoing supply constraints and the need to prioritise allocations. WHO warns that the response is hampered by limited vaccine production, poor water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure, weak surveillance, shortages of trained personnel and restricted access to conflict‑affected areas.
The agency also links continued transmission to climate pressures, cross‑border population movements and overstretched national health systems. In response, WHO, UNICEF, IFRC and partners are stepping up coordination, refining forecasting tools and ranking vaccine requests by urgency, while calling for greater global investment in preparedness and response.
The report highlights recent support from the Government of Japan, which provided commodities, equipment, surveillance tools and training worth about 500,000 dollars through WHO to bolster Nigeria’s cholera control efforts. Items valued at 104,951 dollars have already been handed over to the Federal Government via the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Abuja to strengthen early detection, containment and rapid response, with the goal of cutting illness and deaths from cholera.